f13.net

Not really. Or at least, only on one server. (Link) (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26726065190&sid=1)


I get the impression they're really doing everything they can to avoid any "WoW closes server" headlines.

Looking at its WarcraftRealms (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=652) stats, Dentrag's Alliance population is probably pretty dreadful.  It's also reasonably old, coming up in March 2006.

I imagine by switching it to PvE and getting the Horde PvPers to transfer off they can add it to the Recommended list to pump up the Alliance population.  If this goes well, I wouldn't be surprised to see more of these happen around Cataclysm launch along with a token number of new servers so they don't add more capacity than they need over the next two years, again.

This isn't the first server they've converted, I don't think - it might be the first US server though.

This thread did not deliver.

No, it really didn't. In fact, I think we should sue the thread title for false and misleading advertising.

There's not even a chart.

It's not my fault that this sort of thing isn't as fun as it used to be. All of my usual foils have long since lost the urge to flame. It used to be that I couldn't even mention PVP as a concept on these forums without one of the usual suspects leaping out of the woodwork to froth and babble about how I was an evil carebear who should choke on a thousand cocks and die. These days they won't make a peep even when baited. The closest we got was a while back when we had a couple of people waxing indignant at my implication that class balance and gear have something to do with Arena success.

Hey fuckers. There's an alternate universe out there somewhere in which all the population balancing gimmicks in UO were failed attempts to get people into Trammel, Shadowbane and Darkfall are huge hits, 80% of Eve players aren't craftards living in Empire space, and WoW attempts to jumpstart desolate PVE servers by enabling ganking. Suck my balls. /troll

Anyway, it's pretty obvious that PVP realms serve no real purpose at this point. Every PVE server has people getting ganked in Wintergrasp and city raids happening on a semi-regular basis. The only thing a PVP server adds is lowbie ganking. With everyone level 60 and up being able to fly everywhere come Cataclysm, it's only going to get worse. Drop out of sky, one-shot newbies, fly away, rinse and repeat. But hey, it's okay because anyone who doesn't like it can level to max in dungeons and Battlegrounds, or just transfer over at max level from a PVE realm, making the whole thing meaningless anyway.

Theoretically, world pvp on pvp servers will be revitalized by Catacylsm having a Quel'Danas style daily hub.

Or at least that is what people seem to be hoping. I don't really care myself, since I don't play on pvp servers.

Nah, "world pvp" (in the usual sense) will be "revitalised" by having flying mounts all over the world so bored L85s can literally drop out of the sky to gank newbies. :-)

I like playing on a PvP server, if only because when I briefly transfered to a PvE one to join a new raiding guild, I felt like there was something missing.  Seeing an enemy player come into where you're questing or farming, having to keep an eye on them, and making sure not to leave yourself overexposed while still getting done what you went there to do is fun in the quantities that it usually happens after the initial leveling rush.

There's less of the fun version of that now since the places that are great to farm in are also the places were other players are incentivized to kill you outright instead of just going after the same resources.

I could do without the lowbie ganking, idiotic fights outside raid portals, and people's idiotic reactions to those events, but I still wouldn't choose a PvE server over a PvP one in the abstract.

LOL 400 Alliance v. 4000 Horde, sounds like that server has some competitive WG battles.

Seriously, though... I'm glad I'm on ol' crappy Turalyon after seeing those numbers. We don't have WG much (Alliance), but at least we have enough people to get it at a time other than 3 a.m. or so, when everyone else is asleep. These poor schmucks would never have it except maybe then.

Alleria (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=5&factionid=-1&minlevel=10&maxlevel=80&servertypeid=2) is nearly as bad on the ratios, with no hopes of rebalancing.  The ratio used to be 4:1 but more and more Horde transfer off every day since they can't even maintain a single viable 25m raid guild.  WG is a joke, no need to even try, and the world PVP of Cata will only make things worse.  With 14k players on the server they can't add it to the "recommended" list like Dentrag.    I wonder how true this is of other release day servers that had a bad pop balance to begin with.

If this works, I wonder if they'll use it to "fix" Archimonde (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=76&factionid=-1&minlevel=10&maxlevel=80&servertypeid=1) as well.

This.  I just came back to the game and even on a pvp server it was weird seeing everyone mostly leave each other alone while leveling, i was happy to make the world a better place by killing the shit out of every horde i saw while i leveled to 80.

There are more humans on Alleria than there are total characters on Dentarg or Archimonde.  :ye_gods:

Ask any enhance shaman with half a clue about this and you'll get an earful.

If UO players had the option to transfer to a non-trammel server there's wouldn't have been the SWG NGE levels of fuss, sure, some rpk's would have complained about easy targets going, but fuck em. 

As clearly demonstrated in this thread with Blizzard's implementation of a server move using the totally revolutionary idea of giving paying customers a choice, it pays to build the technology into the game to allow said choice.  Just as it's unlikely that future games will not have the facility to rename characters, yet that's how it used to be (e.g. the "Cupid Stunt" character in AC1).

It's also unlikely that an extreme change of playstyle will be forced on existing players as with UO & SWG without giving them an opt out, as server transfers are now standard, so Trammel is a dead issue (except for when Mythic want to drum up some interest in a dead game (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=18776.0)), plus I thought we weren't allowed to discuss it, never mind start a thread on it?

I am surprised that the server clusters have not been readjusted.  Somehow I assumed when they clustered into battlegroups, that Blizzard would revisit and possibly change the clusters around if they found horrible imbalance.  Or maybe I read it somewhere.

They haven't done any switching around, have they?

I think the server clusters are actual geographical splits of hardware? That's why they seem to be organized how they are, or something.

Yes, US Battlegroups have all their servers in the same datacenter (source (http://www.wowwiki.com/US_realm_list_by_datacenter)).

You took this way too seriously. I hadn't heard about ruleset-swapping on live servers before, so I made a thread on the topic while making fun of my own history and trolling a bit. That's all. It's cool.

The differences between the PVE and PVP rulesets are negligible and have been ever since they introduced battlegrounds.

I don't even see the point in having PvP servers anymore with the way the game is structured.

They did that PvP-to-PvP switcheroo on my server (Vek'nilash-EU) in February. Population wise that saved the server since they indeed did mark it as Recommended for new players. PvP wise, well, going from "meh, there's no Allies to fight" to "Meh, can't fight anyone anyway" didn't really matter. It's taken quite long for Alliance raiding guilds to get established, don't think any have transferred here either, but seems they're slowly getting there.

There really, really isn't.  World pvp outside cities or zones like WG is completely pointless and one-sided. 

"World PvP" is little more than cap level players ganking alts trying to level.  Weeeeee fun.  The worldly objectives to engage in competitive pvp just aren't worth the time.  This is a PvE game at its core.  PvP is little more than a brief distraction.  I know it held my interest for a month.

This.

Last time I tried to engage in a little PvP world stuff out in Terrakar all it did was bring in the 80s. Initially it was my 68 paladin and a couple of mid-60ish hordies, but then an 80 orc shaman showed up to ruin it all. So I had to get my 80 DK and teach him the rules of the road, which devolved into me corpse camping him for an hour. Not what I had in mind.

On the other hand, Honor Hold riots can get kinda fun, but it is hell on the folks just trying to level past Hellfire. Or the hordies hassling the gnomes in IF when a Gnomer event spawned in at the end. Now that got exciting, but it was rather hard on the lowbies. Although, why they'd flag up in there...dunno. Excitement is where you find it, I guess.

I had a few pulse-pounding world pvp encounters, and there are few more satisfying pvp moments than turning the tables on some wannabe ganker and killing him in the face (maybe even camping him for a bit). However, 95% of all pvp encounters are decided before they even start.

Even level 80 vs level 80 you get the occasional guy decked out in the best arena gear and top-end pve stuff obliterate people doing dailies. What fun! I know I can 2-shot people on my destro lock when we're both in pve gear... without letting them fight back, even  :awesome_for_real:

I can make meaningful consequence world pvp very simply. Put in one central small town in the middle of map that has a selectable port. It brings up a menu, and it can port you to any zone on the continent instantly. Also, have an inns near it.

Then, make that point capturable.

Now imagine what  the lag would be like in dalaran if all those players were fighting eachoher

Except players would be using it as a porting place, not a fucking around point. Don't put all the other city shit in there, like vendors and AH and bank. Just ports.

With no AH, Bank, trainers, etc. it wouldn't get as packed as Dal. It'd be like WG pre-nerf, which was only REALLY laggy on Tuesday because VoA had just reset. Granted, Andorhal is only Medium Pop, but it was worth the lag for the epic battles we used to have.

Heh, these were my thoughts going into WoW during the first beta.  Well, except for the objectives part, those didn't exist yet.  :awesome_for_real:

As an aside (thank you links in this thread), my server has gotten fairly horde dominated.  We not anything like some of the problem cases, but what was a 1.3 alliance for every one horde has changed into a 1.6 horde to every alliance. 

Had one of these on Kargath a while back. Friend of mine at work has a few friends over on Kargath, horde side. So we made some DKs to go hang with them off and on. I was on after work leveling my BE DK and decided I needed that sword from Halaa, being about that level. Of course, it's in alliance hands, so I start in on the bombing runs. I'm slowly making progress and a NE hunter shows up. I see him while circling in for a landing at the bomb cart and think, yeah, this guy is going to try it. I'm 65. He's 70.

Sure enough, as soon as I hit the ground he sends the pet in. Not too smart, but it is what it is. I'm a blood tank with quest gear. So I DG his ass in and it's on. Fortunately, the guy doesn't have much of a clue and I beat him down. 5 levels. Took every trick in the DK book, but I'm still standing at 20% health at the end. Pretty cool. Before round two could get under way, about a half dozen 80 fellow hordies show up and I get my sword without further drama.

Missed ya WUA. Nice to see you are still obsessed.  Now go back to holding hands with your Night Elf boyfriend on your PVE server. PVP servers were cool because it was fun to watch things escalate. One lowbie gets ganked by a 60. He would call his friend in. After about 15-20 minutes, it was an all out Horde vrs. Alliance slugfest at Tarren Mill.

Ah, good times here in memory lane.

I'm so gonna get flak for this but: 9/10, would read again.

The Tarren Mill battles wouldn't have lasted though, people would have got bored eventually.  I liked them because they were unbalanced and therefore unpredictable, but they only escalated as they did by accident, not because Blizzard planned any of that.  I wouldn't be surprised if they rushed battlegrounds just because what was happening was unexpected, flight masters were killable then weren't they?

Uhm...the Tarren Mill/Southshore battles happened on PvE servers too.

Before battlegrounds that was happening pretty much all day every day on Garona.

Hey look, emergent gameplay! QUICK KILL IT WITH SOMETHING WE CAN CONTROL.   What a nice way to summarize the last 5+ years of MMO development.

As someone who was trying to level a character in the tarren mill area pre battlegrounds, a big FUCK YOU to all those saying it was awesome. Remember when horde could get a debuff that let them kill other horde npc's? yeah that was shit too.  I'm all for emergent gameplay but when I have to wait around for 20minutes to have my quest giver respawn you can shove your emergent gameplay up your ass.

Nobody said awesome, I said I liked it, I'm quite sure people who just wanted to level up didn't.  Hence battlegrounds.

cry moar carebear

It was awesome.

EDIT: And yeah, you could kill the Windrider dudes

This is so true that I laughed out loud at my desk.... right before I started crying. 

So much wasted opportunity.  Your players will tell you which parts of your game are fun if only you'll take the time to listen/watch.

I would agree with you for most people playing, but I've come to think differently for myself.  I tend to like doing random BG's and Wintergrasp than doing the same heroic dungeons day in and day out.  I may lose a lot of the time, but at least it is always something different.  I never know what I'm going to get with PvP.  The heroics only change depending on whether you got a crappy tank or a good tank this time.

My biggest beef now, is much like most people.  I can't progress any further without doing arenas.  I can't do arenas unless I find other people that have my same schedule, like pvp, like arena-pvp, and like to do arenas over and over.  I know they are going to change this somewhat in Cata, but why they have held onto making arenas the center-point of their PvP, I'll never understand.  It also sucks that I can't get a decent weapon through "normal" pvp either.  Even with the 25 arena points per day through random BG wins only gets you to two levels down from the top gear and that doesn't include weapons, boots, wrists, or back...  They purposely gimp you to hell for not doing Arenas.

Context is everything.  I made that statement regarding world pvp in WoW.  Not all pvp. 

Somebody will figure it out, they just need to make sure players like Slayerik & Lakov_Sanite get to pick truly different rulesets.

Look, I enjoy pvp...when I play pvp games. Wow isn't a pvp game and calling people carebears isn't going to change that. You want to gank lowbies or kill quest givers fine but that ain't pvp it's just griefing.  Wow had a pvp toggle to appeal to what they thought was a large segment of their players( I bet it turns out to be around 10% in total) but they never built much if any pvp functionality into the game and it's STILL not balanced well for pvp, even after adding resilience gear years later.

There's a lot of things they could have done but it simply comes down to the fact that pvp in wow got in the way of the actual game they made and pissed a lot of people off because of it. That's why battlegrounds were introduced in the first place, people were not happy with random pvp happening all over whatever else they were trying to do.

True pvp is fun, it's an adrenaline rush and yes I even find battlegrounds fun pre 80 where it's more about skill than farmed gear but let's start being honest about what world pvp was.

(http://i44.tinypic.com/oh1mh0.gif)

Entire Towns were killable, that was the end result of any Tarren Mill zerg on our server. Eventually the Alliance would end up with a 2:1 population advantage and plow through the horde, their guards then their entire town and spend the next hour farming the NPCs and ganking that last stubborn horde player that kept respawning.

Eventually when we got bored of that, half of us went back to farming Timbermaw rep and the other half went to wipe out cross-roads instead.  :awesome_for_real:

We are a PvE server.

The "flight masters were killable then weren't they?" comment by me is meant to imply that such things aren't good and clearly weren't intended by Blizzard.  As for what happened on a PVE server, I didn't know, I don't think WoW suits PVP anyway as it's level based.

Flight masters are still killable.

 :drillf:

Happened to me at Southshore when I happened upon an 80 Hunter ganking the FM. He ran away quickly.

Other than WUA and Slayerick having some fun, why are we even talking about PvP in WoW?  It's a joke of a joke.

FMs are killable but when you attack them they summon two enraged... whatever mount you'd fly on from them, and they hit hard.

If you open with a stun they won't summon anything. I have no problems taking out the FM in Stormwind on my druid by starting with pounce.

This late in an expansion there isn't much else to talk about. Most of the excitement the last few months for me has been world PvP--on Whisperwind, which is a good clue about how dull things are at the moment.

Come to think of it, there's some serious irony in this. Horde on WW seems to like attacking out of the way towns in the hopes of presumably provoking alliance to start a fight. Then when they succeed--and get roflstomped--they procede to whine about it either on the forums or via an alliance alt. Had that happen a couple of weeks ago in Honor Hold. Couple of horde were feeling froggy and got gigged, repeatedly. One was apparently butthurt enough to make an alt and berate us about how we were going to suck in arena PvP. Ummm, say what?  :awesome_for_real:

One of them did eventually take the durability hit, I think.  That Tauren began that fight in flight form.

Talking about it is better than playing it, blame WUA for trolling.

It was just like the free-for-all PVP of early UO, wasn't it? Oh I don't mean the action, that's obviously different for a litany of reasons. I mean the fact that it died off completely, despite never actually being removed, as soon as something better came along. Everyone loved fighting in Hillsbrad the way they loved standing around Covetous, right up until Tra...

Eh, you know, I can't even do this. I'm telling you man, I don't know if it's that everyone is getting older, or the fact that most of the really retarded and fun to kick around posters have either shut the fuck up or been driven away, but it's just not like it used to be. I miss Geldon posting yottabytes of garbage about how WoW was going to plummet any time now and Vanguard was going to be totally awesome and editing his posts 500 times while people screamed and threw things at him. I miss Sinij being a giant flaming retard on a level you were just never willing to stoop to. I miss being able to post any old bullshit and have a thirty page slapfight about Trammel or Star Wars spring up like magic.

Hell even Politics. People here still like to pretend that Politics is the crazy dipshit wild west of the internet or something, but really it's a boring "Them Wacky Republicans" forum where the same three people post the same five essays over and over and over again. We need some fucking trolls up in here is what we need. We need another Dash, half a SirBruce, and two or three Grunks. Then life would get interesting again.

Or you could nail your scrotum to a table and cause yourself the same amount of pain AND have a cool story to tell down the pub.


Back on topic: the best world PVP that ever happened in WoW was the pre-WoTLK zombie invasion event. Blizzard sanctioned griefing, enforced by gameplay mechanics and no-one was safe anywhere.

The satisfaction of quietly turning half the Undercity NPCs into zombies and then leading them on a pk rampage in the main area was huge. The tears and cries of frustration it generated were awesome.

I hear ya man. I have four kids now and can't even find time to play a game of LoL with two screaming twins. I probably look back with rose colored glasses, but the Hillsbrad fights lasted until it was only alts leveling there. I'll always think of you as the poster boy for Open PVP hate, and that's ok. You always at least came with your same arguments that held merit, even if they were usually posted in a way goding a response outta guys like me. The glory days are gone, MMOs are just WoW clone pieces of shit with no balls, so you should be glad you were right. I'll be waiting for Diablo3, wiping babies asses while being reminded of your posting. Trammel threads....farewell. Maybe in another five years we can have one for old times sake, schild willing :)

For god's sake, somebody throw a pie!  :awesome_for_real:

Have to agree.  I enjoyed the first few times through each BG and playing in WG for a few weeks.  The effect of gear just slapped me in the face like a wet fish when I would engage someone terrible and get stomped because they could just ignore any damage that I was doing... particularly if it was a Paladin.

He wasn't right about anything, the conversation has shifted from pvp players being evil foul mouthed 12 year olds to people talking about how "actually, *strokes chin* there was quite a lot of pvp on our PVE server".  None of the mainstream games exclude pvp anymore, games are coming out where you can level purely through pvp and the top thread in his UO forum is Mythic trying to drum up interest in their game with a "classic" shard.

It might be another 10 years but somebody is going to let the artificial barriers between players come down on one server just to see what happens, it sure won't be pretty but it's inevitable.  It doesn't make any sense to build a game purely for the 10% of players that might enjoy that ruleset (SB DF), but as a side project of something that has a chance of being successful, sure.  The 10% or so market share for arseholes who want the freedom to be arseholes hasn't changed but 10% of WoW is a lot larger than 10% of EQ.

Who knows, in ten years I might have the time to play a game like that again.

I really believe that the concepts of PvP and MMO have a very hard time coexisting.  Combining character progression with a skill based playstyle is a very tough balancing act.  Then there's the problem that a) gamers have gotten considerably better over the years and b) most people will quit if they lose all the time. 

I don't even want the freedom to be an arsehole. I am just more of an adrenaline junky with my PVP. Item loss, like in UO, SB, Neocron, Eve Online, etc. gave me a reason to want to live (And be able to scoop loot off my opponents corpse). Also, the feeling in your gut when you saw Red names pop up in UO was pretty sweet. Later in UO, I enjoyed Factions - even with the horrible gankiness of moongate campers - because I made runebooks with spots for me and my friends to recall into. We would hit and run them, or take them on if numbers were even enough. We were coordinating with voice on Roger Wilco (lol)... so many times we took on superior numbers. So I guess I like my PVP with the Red Name Rush.

Or maybe I just ganked miners and took their shit. Cause that's what all us open PVP/item loss guys like. Can't really remember, it's all kinda blurry.

It's a sad day when natural enemies are more likely to share a beer or make out than go after one another.  :cry:

Most is right, so you have rulesets where you vary the amount they lose and a ruleset where they can't lose at all.  

Like it's been done before, it's been a page since I said about WoW "The differences between the PVE and PVP rulesets are negligible and have been ever since they introduced battlegrounds" and I haven't seen anyone object (apart from a couple point out that PVE servers were more like PVP servers than I thought, even pre battlegrounds).

I wasn't around for that. What happened?

The Scourge Invasion part le deux (thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15093.0))

Strange glowing crates appear in population centres. Passing players get infected. If infection wasn't cured in 5 minutes, they turned into a zombie with special skills and as part of a Scourge faction (so Allies and Horde could talk to each other while zombies). You could attack anyone whether they were PvP flagged or not, irrespective of whether you were on a PvE or PvP server. As a zombie, you lost health unless you attacked other players or NPCs. You could also infect other players/npcs who would turn shortly afterwards (and the NPCs would then follow you).

As the event went on, more crates appeared and the infection timer reduced so you only had about 30 seconds or some before turning.

It was fucking awesome but loads of people cried about it (that thread being a good example of the division it caused.)

That's how UO pking began for me way back when.  There was just nothing else to really do.  So... blood.   :awesome_for_real:

I thought about objecting, but I'm not really sure what your threshold for negligible is, and I just don't care that much since I am safe on my carebear server and can go into Ashenvale on a new alt without getting corpse camped into oblivion.

I find the differences large enough to be meaningful, personally. During TBC it was exaggerated because the premier high level player hub (Isle of Quel'Danas) was a kill zone on PVP servers, it should be the same in Cataclysm.

I've always wondered about what Ingmar touched on.  What about those spaces where people on both factions are basically forced to be together?  I'm on a PvE server so I can only imagine.  I'm talking about places like Blackrock(old world,) Karazhan (old World,) Gruul's, Magtheridon, Quel'Danas, under the Dragon Temple (name escapes me,) ICC!  There has to be some good ole skirmishing going on there while people are trying to gather and participate in raids, no?  I'd imagine bored people with a hankering for good old fashion ganking would have a hayday hanging around there looking for an easy pounce.

But we are talking about MMOs here, where the devs tell the players which parts of the games are fun (and how the players are doing it wrong if they aren't having fun), remember?

Yeah, but you have to understand Slayerik man. He might wax nostalgic about Hillsbrad ganking because it reminded him vaguely of UO, but basically WoW PVP is pussy bullshit in his book. Sure you can kill people, but you can't take all their armor or blow up their freighter and ruin them. The battlegrounds and stuff that comprise "not excluding PVP" don't even count to him.

Anyway, out of a couple thousand people (or whatever) on a server, how many of them REALLY spent any substantial time running around Hillsbrad picking a fight? A whopping 2% of the population could turn the place into a 24/7 warzone if that's what they wanted.


It's more like Mythic warily circling the idea, because as much "GIEV CLASSIX SHARD PLZ" feedback as they get, they can't forget that they already have a fully open PVP shard with almost no one on it. That's not even my interpretation, that's what the producer has stated.


Darktide? Siege Perilous? Whatever the PVP server in EQ was called? Even at the height of the PK/Carebear wars, it used to be that every major MMO had its designated total fragfest server. WoW just bucked the trend because they didn't feel like dealing with the CS calls over people shit-talking each other.

Blackrock scraps were some of the best. I'm biased cause I was a priest and could mind control bitches into the lava. It was cool cause back then it was 40 man raids, so shit got hairy. Outside Onyxia was another big fighting spot.


Na, I just like ruining their game if there are retarded enough to haul around everything they own in a shit ship. Though, the carebear tears are pretty yummy.

I griefed the shit of the zombies on my warrior, with a paladin in my guild.  We would go full RP Nerd with emotes and heroic utterances while dropping Bladestorm and Holy Wrath on the zombies constantly raiding Westfall, Redridge, Goldshire and Darkshire.  The ex-zombies would get super pissed at us for ruining their fun.

You missed the point, we are getting less options, not more, you have the perfect PVE game now, refined, polished and very very profitable.  What's next?  Do you believe everyone will continue to try to build a better WoW, forever?  EQ wasn't the final word on what's possible and neither is WoW.

Even if all we get for the next ten years is clones of WoW, the changes will just come from outside.  Modern Warfare has online multiplayer, character skill advancement, weapon upgrades & PVE elements (helicopter, airstrike) you can call in to support an attack.   EQ was ported to a console, maybe the next revolutionary mmorpg will end up being ported from a console to a PC.  Ironic, considering pvp players used to be told to go play counterstrike.

What do you mean less options? WoW has Battlegrounds, PVP servers, and an entire endgame zone dedicated to PVP even on PVE servers. Eve has everything from small-scale ganking to giant wars with thousands of combatants. Age of Conan has PVP servers where you can kill anyone you want. Shadowbane is dead, but I think we actually have a couple of people playing Darkfall right now.

Less options within a single game.  WoW has a very narrow focus, PVE levels and gear > everything else.  It works but that's also why it's never going to be an interesting pvp game.  Eve is a weird pvp spaceship game, but it's more interesting to read about it's War than take part.  The others I don't think you can class as successful.

I take exception to your "PVE Levels and gear> everything else" statement.

You can actually level and gear yourself purely within the BG's in WoW if you choose.  You can also choose to stay low level and PvP in BG's if that's your thing.  I'm actually getting my alts more PvP gear from PvP'ing so they can get into heroic PVE instances quicker and easier than purely hitting random 5-mans all day long.  Yes a purple PvP ilvl 232 piece is not equal to an ilvl 232 PvE piece, but it is much much easier to get.  Purple PvP gear makes me more than viable for heroics while making me viable for BG's too!

My beef is hitting the arena cockblock at some point.  However, it is much like hitting the raiding cockblock.  At some point you have to put your individualism away and sign up with a "team" to get to the best stuff.

The one big gap is weapons, but it sounds like that will be changing in Cataclysm.

Yeah, but that's more a function of PVE being a bigger market than hardcore PVP, combined with there being more than three MMO games out there now. So you have a variety. There are a few hardcore PVP games that aren't very large, and some larger PVE games with a minority PVP focus.

I mean I'm not sure what else you expect. The PVP games are out there. I mean if someone makes a Modern Warfare MMO with the two factions running around an entire world shooting each other, we'll just go "Hey someone did WW2O/Planetside right finally!"

Staying low level in level restricted bg's only sidesteps the importance of levels.  I see your other point on items but I'm assuming you are talking about gearing yourself in terms of earned greens and blues.  WoW's gear dependency is such an overwhelming aspect of the game that it's difficult to imagine any other system in comparison.  

I'm talking about how in past games player choice during advancement could be more important than how many exp you had earned and how characters might end up in a situation where they have to make do with store bought or looted non magic *gasp* items.  Obviously the idea of someone using white items in WoW outside the "bad groups" thread is stupid and I'm not suggesting otherwise.  I'm just saying there used to be other ways to do things.

You have been making that point for 10 years.  Hardcore pvp, sure.  General PVP maybe, we won't know till somebody does a good one.  DF & SB failing means no more than Vanguard failing, just means it's a silly idea to intentionally limit your player base by appealing to a subset of players.

I don't even know what you mean by a game that is totally PVP focused but isn't hardcore PVP.

DAOC/WAR I guess?

The type of pvp game you want to exist is not going to happen for the same reason there wasn't another season of farscape.  while they have rabid fanbases neither would be profitable.

I didn't say "totally PVP focused", there's no reason to limit yourself in that way.  AC1, pvp focused or not?

To put it another way, do you think Blizzard could have released a fantasy mmo in 2004 that didn't have levels and yet was widely popular?


I'm talking about ten years ahead, Modern Warfare is already pretty close to keeping me happy and it seemed to do ok.

You've all been suckered in.

For 3 pages now.

I have a really boring job.

Some of us enjoy trolling/being trolled  :awesome_for_real:

I'd rather bite than not.

Yes.  It only needed the Ring Ping™.

I'm only reading for laughs. ;D

Need all I can get at the moment.

I see, interesting.

Wasn't AC1 just the usual carebear-fest with the typical solitary PK server thrown in? I still don't know what you're getting at, or what possible permutation of PVP rules you could be thinking of that doesn't already exist somewhere.

I wasn't talking purely about pvp, you are, but I'm not.  You didn't answer "To put it another way, do you think Blizzard could have released a fantasy mmo in 2004 that didn't have levels and yet was widely popular?

Of course. You really think if WoW had skill trees or something it would have been a flop?

You still aren't telling me what you want. So you want variety, all in one game, but you're not just talking about PVP. But you're not talking about WoW and it's PVE game mixed with battlegrounds, PVP servers, and designated PVP zones. Not that kind of variety. Nor do you mean Eve with it's combination of economics and crafting plus giant player-driven PVP wars. Not that kind of variety either.

Well... what?

No it would be a bloody good game as all Blizzard games are.

Why should it matter what I want?  If I was really interested in the economy and/or crafting then I have to fly a spaceship in straight lines?  Heh no, didn't like it, I'll wait, ten years is fine, I'll even settle for fifteen.  Maybe Modern Warfare 11 will have a toolshed I can tinker in.

You started the thread, over to you, what do you want?

To conjure up a circa five years ago PVP thread by trolling people to their face while acting like I'm doing so self-referentially! Muahahaha!  :why_so_serious:

But no, I've always been pretty clear as to what I want. I want a game that's worldy but not cockstabby, solo-friendly in the extreme, with no classes, lots of fluff and housing, and a player-driven economy. I want an opt-in PVP system that inflicts minimal penalty upon players, though some effect on the world is acceptable. I want some dedicated PVP servers where everyone can frag anyone else, so the Slayeriks of the world have something to do besides play Eve. They can even have one crazy-ass server with item loot or permadeath or what the hell ever for all I care, I won't be playing on it.

Basically I want UO circa 2001 updated with everything that's been learned since. Such a game would never do really huge numbers, but it could grab a couple hundred thousand people and keep them forever. But nobody with money really thinks in those terms.

Sounds good to me, especially Slayeriks server, you just need to think of a name for that server.  F something maybe?

For sub-60 level, you can earn honor to purchase decent blues which aren't really PvP specific, just decent gear.  60-80, you can get all kinds of purples that are typically more pvp oriented, but still quite good when used in PvE, just not as good as the same ilevel.  At 80, I'm mostly talking ilvl 232 purples, which you might compare to ilvl 200 purple PvE items.  The PvP ilvl 232 items are way easier to obtain, in my opnion.  You can literally jump from white items, if you want, and get them.  You will certainly get all kinds of complaining from other players that don't like the fact that you have a GS of 10 in their BG, but if you have a thick skin it won't matter.  It really doesn't matter in Wintergrasp, just be one of the masses getting killed over and over.  You'll still get your rewards.

As for shaping your character based on what you do, WoW handles that with items.  The items make you what you are (outside of player skill,) and what you do determines what items you have.  My guess is you are referencing back to a skill based system like UO.  The only problem is, everyone eventually hits that sweet spot of skills they want for their character and it is basically a well developed "class" that a lot of other people do too.  The problem is, if you want to change, you are faced with a lot more time to do it.

I like the item route because I can keep as many sets of items I want to switch how I want to play at any time.  As an example, my paladin was in a BG last night.  I started off as a Ret-healer (ret spec, but wearing my healing gear) because we typically have no healers.  It turns out we have too many healers, so I change my gear to my pure DPS.  Sometimes I'll throw on my tank gear (from PvE) because a situation needs a more tanky person (AV anyone?)  I do this with all my other chars too.  Each one has gone through a lot of different paths to get a lot of different items that make up their power and flexibility for any situation.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just giving examples within WoW that seem to somewhat fit what you are saying.

And it should be pointed out that the current PVP items are in fact actually better to PVP with than PVE gear of the same level, which was not always true in the past.

If you look back at this derail (maybe derail is the wrong word for this thread).  Anyway, if you look back it started because I said "PVE Levels and gear> everything else" for WoW.  Mentioning the different ways you can get items and the reasons that exist for carrying more than one set isn't really telling me I'm wrong.  I wasn't criticising WoW for being WoW, it is what it is, it's also the biggest and best game on the market by a long way.  It's weak in other areas, but it's in competition with games that are quite often weak in every area.