Someone please explain pvp to me

[Threash]

Coming from Shadowbane the no reward/no penalty/no risk/no winners or losers system they had going during the open beta seemed pretty stupid.  I heard something about an honor points system and battlegrounds and raids but if any of that was implemented i must have completely missed it.  The whole respawn at a graveyard nearby to your corpse thing simply has got to go in pvp, make people respawn at their bind point with their corpse or else battles never end.  I'm not having much luck searching the main site and the forums got shut off after the beta so can someone give me a brief summary of what pvp is gonna be all about in a normal and a pvp server?

[Trippy]

Server types:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/realmtypes.html

PvP Combat rules:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/pvpcombat.html

Promised PvP features that won't be in the game at release:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/pvp-article.html

[Viin]

I think the equipment decay is suppose to alleviate the die-spawn-die-spawn-die-spawn cycle. If you use your corpse to respawn it'll take 10% of your item's health.. so, in theory, if you die 10 times it will totally trash your equipment. If you use the spirit healer to respawn, it only takes 4 times to trash your equipment.

However, you are right - it still sucks. Personally, I think that if your race don't own the city then you shouldn't be able to use the graveyard. It should go to the closest graveyard you know of that is owned by your race. If you don't want to run 500 miles to your corpse then use the spirit healer.

But maybe that's just me.

[Trippy]

I think the equipment decay is suppose to alleviate the die-spawn-die-spawn-die-spawn cycle. If you use your corpse to respawn it'll take 10% of your item's health.. so, in theory, if you die 10 times it will totally trash your equipment. If you use the spirit healer to respawn, it only takes 4 times to trash your equipment.

They supposedly took out the durability penalty for PvP deaths. In other words Zerg for the win!

[stray]

I never read that PvP article before, just the server stuff. If they end up delivering on it, I can't say I wouldn't be impressed. I'm mainly PvP oriented, but I'll be the first to admit that most, if not all, implementations of it have been downright shitty. Hopefully WoW will be different.

[Kageru]

Still sounds like a fight between game mechanics and human nature to me. The honor system might stop ganking and griefing, but I always back the ingenuity of motivated humans over automated systems. Of course it should be fun to watch, nothing generates drama like PvP.

Of course i'm biased because the only PvP i'd do would be a pre-arranged battle between ready, willing and ideally balanced forces. And that's battlefields, which are available on both server types.

[Viin]

They supposedly took out the durability penalty for PvP deaths. In other words Zerg for the win!

Oooh you're right, I forgot about that. Fudge. Guess I'll have to wait for Battelgrounds to get involved with PvP.  I may drop WoW completely if they don't get those implemented before Guild Wars starts.

[Threash]

That honor system looks interesting, are you saying it won't be in at launch so we are stuck with completely meaningless pvp until that comes out?  Thanks for the links btw, they where very informative.

[Resvrgam]

Personally, I think that if your race don't own the city then you shouldn't be able to use the graveyard. It should go to the closest graveyard you know of that is owned by your race. If you don't want to run 500 miles to your corpse then use the spirit healer.

But maybe that's just me.

I agree.  I think that cities should be completely taken over (both contested and enemy territories...though Capital/Starting cities should be treated as insta-spawning guards-a-palooza).

If a city's NPCs are all slain, the city goes to the besieging/raiding team.  I've mentioned a way for the fallen team to regain their cities through PvE quests that rally uber-guards ...but who knows?

Anyways, the "You now have a new graveyard to spawn from" would be an incentive to takeover enemy cities and, this one's kind of stretching it but; when cities are taken over by opposing forces, new NPCs begin to populate those places who can issue new quests...thus expanding the PvE treadmill for those who do not wish to engage in PvP endeavors.  

When a team who has lost a city wants it back, they complete the PvE quests (or even try to take it back with some nice PvP battles) and they may resume their regularly scheduled PvE treadmills.

I know I'd love to play a system like this...it would allow both PvP and PvE players to peacefully co-exist.   What do you guys think?

[stray]

Anything with that much intrusivness on faction territory and around the clock PvP would frustrate anyone who's only into PvE, just as a matter of principle. There are people who just don't want to be affected by it, one way or another, even if it's not their own characters that are getting killed. I think only PvP players would like it, but even some of them would get tired of having to regain from losses through a PvE treadmill.

[Trippy]

That honor system looks interesting, are you saying it won't be in at launch so we are stuck with completely meaningless pvp until that comes out?  Thanks for the links btw, they where very informative.

I didn't do any PvPing but I believe the Honor system was in place by the end of Beta. I don't know if the Reward system was, however. The developers said it would be in the 11/7 patch but I don't see any reference to PvP rewards in the patch notes themselves. Also as SOE and Blizzard have both shown, a lot can change in a week's time so it's possible that more of this stuff will be in place when the game goes live next week.

[Resvrgam]

Anything with that much intrusivness on faction territory and around the clock PvP would frustrate anyone who's only into PvE, just as a matter of principle. There are people who just don't want to be affected by it, one way or another, even if it's not their own characters that are getting killed. I think only PvP players would like it, but even some of them would get tired of having to regain from losses through a PvE treadmill.

Maybe it could be implemented on PvP servers then?  It just seems rather pointless to have PvP without anything substantial as a reward/loss.  Who cares if you killed a few dozen players?  I'm not playing a game to unzip and brandish my e-penis, I'm trying to play for a result (LevelQuest 2's "There's a cold war but no PvP with the enemy factions" is downright pathetic IMO).

It would be much easier for the developers to incorporate more content without having to constantly add new zones (ala LevelQuest) to a point where they had to leave the bloody planet because they ran out of land masses/ideas for the main world.

If PvE players need only complete a spawned quest to continue their treadmill into a previously occupied city, IMO it helps perpetuate the questing (that helps to mask the grind) and constantly supply new things to do as one races for the level cap (so you've reached the level-cap, now what?).  

Those interested in defending their territories would probably hold a higher regard for their allies as well: "Can't grief this guy if I expect him to defend me/my city later."  

If the starting zones were all left to the uber-guards of the current iteration, there'd still be plenty of "content" to quest/grind through as a PvE player and they'd be less affected if the cities in jeopardy were intended for the higher-leveled crowd anyways: Auberdine, Westfall, etc.

Without a gain/loss tug-of-war, the whole PvP thing seems pointless to me.

[sidereal]

It just seems rather pointless to have PvP without anything substantial as a reward/loss.

Consider Shadowbane.

The problem is the reward/loss sucks for the losers, who leave.  Then it sucks for the winners.

A PvP game requires perpetual conflict.  Perpetual conflict requires at least two motivated and engaged parties.  Being motivated and engaged requires that you have some chance of victory.  Maintaining a perpetual state where all sides have some chance of victory is extremely difficult.  Doing it without severely impacting the casuals and the PvE people who want no part of it is probably impossible.

One required step would be to make holding territory exponentially more expensive as you gain more, so as your territory gets smaller and smaller, your ability to defend it goes up dramatically.  Then you might find a good equilibrium.  Shadowbane completely boffed it by making it easier to conquer more, the more you conquered.  That's the endgame of an RTS, and it's short and not pretty.

[Resvrgam]

Very valid points, Sidereal.

What I was referring to wouldn't reduce anyone's chance for "victory" at all though.

If a low-leveled player finds him/herself traveling to one of these "now occupied by the enemy" cities to continue their path of level-progression and find that this path has been blocked, they need simply return to their initial cities and find the newly spawned quest-giver who issues them a task to Call to Arms their side's NPC army who will (upon being marshalled) descend upon the overtaken city and, essentially, clean up...allowing the low-leveled player to continue their questing (as the once slain NPC quest-givers begin to repopulate the city).

It's not really different than what's already in place...but it would probably create the illusion of conflict more than the stray Horde/Alliance war party that kills a few NPCs who only respawn a few minutes later without skipping a beat.

I agree that there shouldn't be anything punishing to the losing faction (the 100% durability loss was annoying to say the least) but, without a reward of actually making a difference in the world, PvP is boring and doesn't offer anything compelling (to me at any rate).

This is a game about War is it not?  So how come the war is reduced to a few, isolated pockets of raiders who usually end up dying without accomplishing anything beyond: "Why is that guy's name in yellow and how come he gets to kill NPCs?  Oh look, he got owned by that massive squad of Guards...yay."

There'd still be guards so 100% 'round the clock vigilance wouldn't be required but, if those guards are all destroyed and the city is taken while you're gone, it wouldn't be a massive punishment to accomplish a quest (to rally your NPC army...or PvP the enemy out of your city) that probably wouldn't be much of a bother to a higher-leveled character anyways.

Bob the Lvl 14 Night Elfin Hunter has just returned from completing the "Kill the Den Mother" quest to Auberdine to find that the city has been completely taken over by the Horde.  He is unable to Claim his reward from the NPC quest giver and all the NPC have been slain and replaced by Horde personalities: Orcs, Trolls, Undead & Tauren now litter the streets where Night Elves & Dwarves used to be.  As Bob approaches the center of town, a Quest dialogue pops up displaying "Auberdine has been sacked!  The elders in Shadowglen should be warned of this city's fate!  You must seek the counsel of <name of some important NPC> in Shadowglen.

Since the Hippogryphs have been temporarily disabled by the death of their master, Bob is forced to take a ship from Auberdine to Teldrassil.  His race back to Shadowglen yields a quest from <important NPC>.  He must blow the Horn of Cenarius which is located in an area that is surrounded by pissed off firbulgs (or other, not so dangerous hostiles).

Upon reaching the Horn, Bob "uses" it and a sound is heard throughout Teldrassil/Auberdine (alerting the occupying Horde of the inevtiable rallying of Alliance forces).  Since the Horn can only be blown once (per loss of a city), theis elminates the annoyance associated with a continually spamming of the horn sound.

With the Call to Arms sounded, a large group of ancient Treants arrive at the horn's location and instruct Bob to place a beacon to guide them to the distressed city.

Bob hops back on a boat to Auberdine and places the beacon....and the slow, trudging army of ancients make their way to Auberdine.

After a brief duration (allowing both forces to assemble and occupying players to attempt to complete a PvE quest, etc.), the High-Leveled Treant army emerges in Auberdine and attacks the occupying Horde: killing all Horde NPCs (and hostile/flagged Horde Players).  Slain Treants are respawned from a moderate distance and trek back to Auberdine to finish the job until all hostiles are eradicated. (They will not insta-repsawn after the "coast is clear" which could be determined by a timer).

Since the Horde do not have the option to Call an NPC army of their own due to this being an originally Alliance-held territory, the slain Horde cannot insta-retalliate.   After a short duration, the Treant army skulks back to their initial spawning point and await their next Call to Arms.

Bob finds that the NPC quest giver he was initially looking for has returned to Auberdine and he collects his reward.

Since some defenders (players) who died after the city was taken by the Horde, their spirits were revived in other cities.  Players who successfully return to the now Horde-occupied Aiberdine will also have the Quest Dialogue to consult <important NPC> in Shadowglen.

Pros:  New NPCs, new content and a chance for *bonues* PVE quests from the new colonist/NPCs can be gained by occupying an enemy city.

Cons: a minor amount of time lost and a few quests issued.

[stray]

One thing worth mentioning: I'm just going by that PvP article linked above, but Blizzard doesn't really have a meaningless "just for the sake of" PvP system. At least not what they've promised. What they've "promised" doesn't sound too bad imo. It isn't perfect, but it's better than what most games have offered.

Racking up honor points and the rewards associated with them sounds like at least a mildly interesting goal to PvP for. Everyone wants a little notoriety and special access/privilege, right? It's not exactly making any dramatic effect on the game world, but rewards are a good enough reason as any to PvP.

[sinij]

PvP in WoW is 100% meaningless, there are no goals and no penalty for loosing.

[stray]

Uhh, DAOC didn't even have it's Realm system completely sorted out when it was released. WoW hasn't even been released yet. I'm by no means a fanboi, but I'm going to have to defend it here a little. They do have goals/rewards in mind. They're just not in there yet. I haven't read much in the way of penalties though.

I'd be surprised if they didn't deliver on some of the things they've promised by December. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they realize just as much as anyone here does that risk/reward in PvP is essential. After all, they've gotten this far.

[Righ]

Entertaining though Resvrgam's design was, it isn't about to be implemented on a Blizzard server any time soon, I suspect. However, one thing that hasn't been mentioned with regards penalties is in the game. Upon death, be it PvP or PvE, use of the spirit healer involves rez sickness. PvP in WoW therefore requires considering a dead body as that person's spawn spot at half health. If you prevent them from respawning (by guarding their corpse at greater than half health yourself), they won't rejoin a fight for a while.

That's good enough for everything but large fights very close to a graveyard. I see that limitation, but not where the whole sky falls for PvP.

[chinslim]

What's there to explain about MMO PvP?  See lower level: gank.  See higher level: run.

[Litigator]

Actually some of the implementation sounds cool.  I like that there's no real incentive to run around and bother people on quests, even on the PVP server, but I also like that the conflict comes into play, even on the standard servers.

Apparently, attacking opposing NPCs will make you a PVP target, even on standard servers, and many quests will have goals that require killing opposing NPCs.  Which is good, because I don't think it would be very convincing a game if orcs and alliance just went indifferently about their business.

Blizzard's problem is the difficulty of creating a sense of factions at war without creating a situation where players can be jerks and behave horribly.

I think that's what they're trying to do with the friendly/contested/enemy territories. It doesn't seem to be an incentive to conquer other territories, I think it's a device intended to prevent higher level enemy players from annoying lower level players in the newbie areas (you cannot initiate PVP combat in enemy territory)

[SurfD]

One of my slightly annoying PvP storys:

Was doing the "Sleeper has Awakened" quest, where you guide a sleepy Elvish Druid from one location to another, blowing a horn to wake him up from time to time.  The area he starts in is Alliance, and the area he is going to is Contested.  I was trecking through the Alliance part, when an Insta Death con Tauren Shaman runs up to me.  He cant attack me, since I am in Alliance held territory and not flagged as PVP active. So instead, he ganks my deffenseless NPC tagalong.  Needless to say, I was not impressed....

Under the proposed system, would he get some kind of penalty for ganking said NPC? or does that only effect interactions between one player and another, and not between one player and a hostile Faction NPC?

[Sky]

Surf, was that on the pvp server? That's the kind of thing that really has me thinking there is no way in hell I'd play WoW. I hate griefers with a passion. And level-based pvp is lame, chinslim defined it succinctly.

[Venkman]

That's sort of a wierd rule. I mean, the point of contested land is to compel PvP. But it sounds like you got the quest at an inappropriate level for travelling through PvP+ lands.

WoW PvP is still level-based. It's nice that they aren't hindering the path the level 60, but they shouldn't be expecting people to have fun and engaging PvP throughout the other 59 levels. The "price of entry" is just going to keep rising as the average level of the PvP participant increases. This was true in early DAoC and is still true in SB.

I would imagine they'll have to adjust the level of that quest, or highly recommend the player bring some higher level friends along with them.

WoW's PvP system is compelling to me because I like how integrated it is into the game. But that's a dry assessment of an on-paper description. In actuality, the PvP system has the same issues other level-based PvP games have had.

But damn if WoW PvP isn't fun for a lot of people. I've tried it a few times and have had a grand old time in it. But that was with toss-away beta characters, since I was very sure they'd wipe them anyway. Even then though, that average "price of entry" level just kept climbing.

[MrHat]

Gamespot did a review w/ some PvP info in it:

The new player vs. player battlefield we saw in action was Alterac Valley, an area that, appropriately enough, lies just below the Alterac Mountains. This valley was characterized by designer Rob Pardo as a "mid-level area" intended for characters of levels 40 to 49 (players will be able to reach a maximum character level of 60 at launch), and, like Blizzard intends for all its battlefields, it will also be asymmetrical. Pardo explained that Blizzard plans to have all battlefields be in line with World of Warcraft's other environments--hand-crafted areas that stress the game's lore and history, rather than quick-and-dirty gameplay.

So while battlefields will still have tactical considerations (each faction will enter the area from a different point, and each faction will have a starter town and graveyard), they will actually have non-PvP quests, like pretty much every other environment in World of Warcraft. That's right--you'll actually receive quests that require you to run through these battlefield areas in search of specific characters to talk to and items to collect. But since you'll also be risking your neck against hostile players, you'll likely stand to earn greater rewards than you might have in a safer zone.

Interestingly, World of Warcraft's primary player vs. player gameplay in battlefields will also be based on quests. That is, although battlefields are instanced (they're loaded up as areas that are separate from the main gameworld), they won't simply be a place where two huge mobs of players collide. Instead, they'll be the site of a series of quests that culminates in an eventual team-based goal. For example, the primary goal of Alterac Valley (and likely that of other, future battlegrounds) is to hunt down and destroy a computer-controlled commander character who belongs to the opposite faction. However, you can't make this character appear unless you complete a series of ancillary quests on the battlefield first. The game will use a faction-wide broadcast system to inform you of when each of your side's quests has been completed. If you can complete your faction's mission first, and limit your player vs. player skirmishes to enemies of about the same relative strength as you, you'll earn "honor," a new distinction that was added to the game at the very end of its beta test.

World of Warcraftscreenshot
Blizzard intends for the player vs. player elements to be just as appealing as the player vs. environment elements.

Accruing honor lets your character gain rank, moving from private, to corporal, to sergeant, and so on. Climbing the ranks will earn your character rewards, ranging from discounts on items at certain shops to top-level items like an exceptionally powerful magic sword. These rewards are intended to be in line with Blizzard's approach to developing player vs. player and player vs. environment play--namely, that neither should be mutually exclusive, and that players should be able to advance their characters and enjoy themselves in either way.

To me, that sounds like the end game doesn't have to be raid raid raid for some people who enjoy pvp.

Read the full exposition here.

[Trippy]

Under the proposed system, would he get some kind of penalty for ganking said NPC? or does that only effect interactions between one player and another, and not between one player and a hostile Faction NPC?

Here's the description the WoW site:

Honor is a concept that is central to our PvP ranking system. There are honorable kills and there are dishonorable kills. You earn honor for killing opponents at or near your level, and more honor still if you kill a higher level player character, as opposed to an NPC. There are also dishonorable kills, and these would include killing lower level PCs and NPCs, and especially non-aggressive NPCs like gryphon masters and quest givers. If you repeatedly make dishonorable kills, you'll eventually go into the negative ranks, and lose experience and become attackable on sight by both factions. Our intention is to punish dishonorable behavior and reward honorable PvP play.

Your NPC is kind of special but presumably would fall under the non-aggressive NPC category. Personally I think it's unlikely the way things are described now that griefers will be discouraged from doing that sort of thing -- in other words, eventually vendor, quest NPCs, etc. in less defended areas will be camped around the clock on both PvE and PvP servers. It's my greatest worry about WoW but I'm willing to play it for a while to see how things turn out.

[Trippy]

Surf, was that on the pvp server? That's the kind of thing that really has me thinking there is no way in hell I'd play WoW. I hate griefers with a passion. And level-based pvp is lame, chinslim defined it succinctly.

It doesn't matter since killing enemy NPCs is allowed on any kind of server.

[Trippy]

That's sort of a wierd rule. I mean, the point of contested land is to compel PvP. But it sounds like you got the quest at an inappropriate level for travelling through PvP+ lands.

He wasn't in contested territory -- he was still in friendly (Alliance) lands.

[SurfD]

Just a note, the NPC wasnt "Deffenseless" in the classic sense of the word. As part of the quest, you get attacked by some wild animals about 2/3 of the way to your destination and he fights back along with you.  He never got a chance to Fight back against whatever level that Tauren was who attacked him tho, as the Tauren essentially 2 shotted him.

As to level, that NPC was level 20, and I was level 17 when it let me accept the quest.

[Sky]

Yeah, I'm sure that behaviour will be quite rare *eye rolly icon* The fact that your quest npc can be ganked just sounds lame. It also borders into non-consentual combat, since it's a player's quest npc that's getting ganked.

Honor is a concept that is central to our PvP ranking system.

Bwhaha! Honor. In online pvp. Hehehe, that's a good one. How can the company responsible for Diablow not expect rampant exploiting and griefing and general dishonorable behaviour from their customer base? Where's any evidence to the contrary?