PVP attitudes changing?

[El Gallo]

Ganking in SB is the same with WoW, except without seiges, player cities, or land conquest. And all I'm saying is that I'm surprised people wouldn't prefer the former (SB). Surprised. Nothing more. Not that I want them to play what I play or force them into things they don't want. Try not to read so much into my post.

Why would they want PvP with an enormous pile of annoying shit on top of it when they could just have PvP?  I can (a) die with no consequences and still enjoy the overwhelming majority of the game's content (because it's in PvP-free instances) at the snap of my finger or (b) I can die and have this city I worked on for months ripped to nothing overnight and then be locked out of a huge portion of the game's desireable content for a very long time thereafter.  I'll take the first one prz.

[Arthur_Parker]

My guess from right field is that the average European player has had broadband longer than the average US person. Therefore, he played more FPS games back in the mid-late 90s, so he's more inclined to enjoy player vs player stuff.

Broadband was rare over here prior to 2000. I couldn't get it where I live (in fricking London) until 2002.

Yup rare, West Yorkshire got broadband Nov 2001.

[Merusk]

Ganking in SB is the same with WoW, except without seiges, player cities, or land conquest. And all I'm saying is that I'm surprised people wouldn't prefer the former (SB). Surprised. Nothing more. Not that I want them to play what I play or force them into things they don't want. Try not to read so much into my post.

Er.. except that it's not.  Get ganked in SB and you lost equipment durability and, most likely, everything you were carrying.  On top of that you got a free trip back to your home tree.. hope you weren't too far. Get ganked in WoW and you get a trip to the spirit healer - a maximum 3-5 min run.  No durability loss, (unless you spirit rez)  no loss of items or inventory.

[Rasix]

PvP in Shadowbane resulted in the losing side quitting the game at an alarming rate. 

Winning wasn't much better.  Once everyone's razed or pacified, all you have left is the lovely PVE.

[Arthur_Parker]

On the point about Europe, I don't know why pvp is more popular, but I doubt it has anything to do with UO, which was available over here anyway, and these days is too long ago to matter a damn.

I was thinking UO as having a greater influence in the US due to the lasting effects of player word of mouth rather than number of actual players.  I also thought UO wasn't widely available in Europe until UO:R when the worst ganking was over, (though I might well be wrong).

[Stephen Zepp]

I'll put in a sure to be unpopular opinion, but most of the non-Americans I've met online have been far more mature. My guess is that PVP is more popular because there are fewer jerks. Ditto for Asia. I played in the Taiwanese beta for Lineage 2. I saw 2 reds in the weeks I spent there and neither was griefing anyone.

I lasted like an hour in the US beta. It was nothing but grief ganking and racist, homophobic, misogynist trashtalk.

Edit/Add: You could say a lot of the same things about Eve. Full PVP game and look at the level of maturity and lack of griefing. And it's European dominated.

With all due respect to various posters here on f13, does this surprise you? Look at how we, mostly adults, mostly intelligent, mostly "nice" in real life, treat each other in posts daily, and the culture of grief posting and (insert adjective here) trashtalk in MMOG's that allow PvP should make a lot more sense.

Ok, not sense, in the normal sense, but deductively obvious...it still doesn't make any "sense" to me why people have to treat others that way...

[Arthur_Parker]

Anyone care to have a stab at why the EU is different to the US?

For US I get 83 PVP servers compared to 73 PVE servers.

For Europe I still get 112 PVP servers compared to 67 PVE servers.

Was there any launch lag for Europe or did they go live at the same time as the NA audience?  PVP servers got really popular (in that they started putting up more PVP than PVE) once Blizzard realized everyone was playing them.  That would have influenced what server PVP/PVE ratio they decided to have.

WoW went live here about a year ago, so the US had it a few months earlier (that could explain a lot).

[Margalis]

There are many important aspects of WoW PvP that make it popular:

There are places where you can't get ganked.
There are groups (your own side) that can't gank you.
There are low penalties for getting ganked.

I'm all for PvP with consequences, but consequences increases both the incentive to grief and the disruptiveness of griefing. Player justice may work but nobody has any idea how - simply killing the guy who killed you obviously does not work at all. A player justice system that had the right tools and safeguards in place may work, but nobody has ever tried that and most people don't have the talent to design such a system.

---

However, to say that WoW shows that PvP is popular is like saying that WoW shows that Gnomes are popular, or that awful armor models are popular. Maybe PvP isn't popular at all, just WoW PvP in the entire context of the game is popular.

Did Super Mario show that jumping is popular? I dunno...should we add jumping to Scrabble?

I think it's silly to pretend that people have attitudes like "PVP rules!" or "jumping rules!" or "putting on the hammer brothers suit rules!"

In games the devil is ALWAYS in the details, and people here constantly talk at a level so high it's meaningless. WoW PvP is popular not because attitudes are changing but because WoW does some very specific things that other games don't do.

[Arthur_Parker]

Again I would stress that although the figures are from WoW I think they are interesting because.

1. More players clicked PVP rather than PVE.

2. PVE servers have battlegrounds.

Margalis, If the "the devil is ALWAYS in the details" then at the very least, WoW players were very well informed on the different rulesets before they created their first character.

[tazelbain]

Nebu:
I don't. The brand would bring more intial boxes, but most of those people would be gone after the first time their city was destroyed.  Stabilty would slowed the loss of players, but I remember my guild disintergating and there was a lot more complaints then sb.exe.

My city was never destroyed while I was in SB (not that we didn't taunt the uber-alliance), but I do remember razing 4 cities.  Most of them vowed to destroy to us, but they never did because most their membership found other things to do.  And I think that's why the uber-alliance never razed us, they didn't want us quit.  We were their only active oppisition.  The rest of the land was filled carebear neutrals that would fold under the slightest pressure. 

Even in a game that was advertised as open PvP, the majority of players would rather log off than deal with conflict. I am sure many told themselves that they would eventual go hardcore later, but they usually didn't when faced with the realities of the game.  And I don't see how adding the Warcraft theme and the Blizard pollish would change that very basic aspect.

[Trippy]

I'll put in a sure to be unpopular opinion, but most of the non-Americans I've met online have been far more mature. My guess is that PVP is more popular because there are fewer jerks. Ditto for Asia. I played in the Taiwanese beta for Lineage 2. I saw 2 reds in the weeks I spent there and neither was griefing anyone.

I lasted like an hour in the US beta. It was nothing but grief ganking and racist, homophobic, misogynist trashtalk.

Edit/Add: You could say a lot of the same things about Eve. Full PVP game and look at the level of maturity and lack of griefing. And it's European dominated.

With all due respect to various posters here on f13, does this surprise you? Look at how we, mostly adults, mostly intelligent, mostly "nice" in real life, treat each other in posts daily, and the culture of grief posting and (insert adjective here) trashtalk in MMOG's that allow PvP should make a lot more sense.

Ok, not sense, in the normal sense, but deductively obvious...it still doesn't make any "sense" to me why people have to treat others that way...

While I agree that people treat each other worse over the Internet than they would face-to-face the whole trash-talking "culture" you often get in PvP games is the same as the sports/locker room/buddies ragging on buddies trash-talking you hear in real life. The difference of course is that in real life you are doing it in face-to-face so you are either doing with your friends or you think you are tougher than the guy you are putting down.

[stray]

Why would they want PvP with an enormous pile of annoying shit on top of it when they could just have PvP?  I can (a) die with no consequences and still enjoy the overwhelming majority of the game's content (because it's in PvP-free instances) at the snap of my finger or (b) I can die and have this city I worked on for months ripped to nothing overnight and then be locked out of a huge portion of the game's desireable content for a very long time thereafter.  I'll take the first one prz.

I really don't want to argue that SB is better here (though I do think you and Merusk are a little inclined to just point out it's negatives). It's all beside the point anyways. I'm just surprised that a PvP system with less features and possibilities is a success, even though it has an almost identical ruleset to SB's (i.e. I can get ganked and annoyed just as easily by 5 +lvl players in Stranglehorn, and blocked from quests and mobs just as I could outside Khar in SB).

[Threash]

Why would they want PvP with an enormous pile of annoying shit on top of it when they could just have PvP?  I can (a) die with no consequences and still enjoy the overwhelming majority of the game's content (because it's in PvP-free instances) at the snap of my finger or (b) I can die and have this city I worked on for months ripped to nothing overnight and then be locked out of a huge portion of the game's desireable content for a very long time thereafter.  I'll take the first one prz.

I really don't want to argue that SB is better here (though I do think you and Merusk are a little inclined to just point out it's negatives). It's all beside the point anyways. I'm just surprised that a PvP system with less features and possibilities is a success, even though it has an almost identical ruleset to SB's (i.e. I can get ganked and annoyed just as easily by 5 +lvl players in Stranglehorn, and blocked from quests and mobs just as I could outside Khar in SB).

Most people don't consider losing months of work a "feature", to most people thats a game destroying bug.  Even to the ones that played SB.

[Margalis]

Again I would stress that although the figures are from WoW I think they are interesting because.

1. More players clicked PVP rather than PVE.

2. PVE servers have battlegrounds.

Margalis, If the "the devil is ALWAYS in the details" then at the very least, WoW players were very well informed on the different rulesets before they created their first character.

Battlegrounds weren't in the release game, and at release people were told that the upcoming "honor system" would prevent griefing. I think that went a long way towards people clicking on PvP. And once people click on PvP the rest of their friends and guild-mates do to.

Although the honor system was garbage PvP as presented by Blizzard is for the most part what people got - no huge risks, not dominated by constant ganking. Blizzard tried to convey that their PvP was different from a lot of what people were used to, and that is true despite the fact that the honor system was a steaming pile.

[Arthur_Parker]

Again I would stress that although the figures are from WoW I think they are interesting because.

1. More players clicked PVP rather than PVE.

2. PVE servers have battlegrounds.

Margalis, If the "the devil is ALWAYS in the details" then at the very least, WoW players were very well informed on the different rulesets before they created their first character.

Battlegrounds weren't in the release game, and at release people were told that the upcoming "honor system" would prevent griefing. I think that went a long way towards people clicking on PvP. And once people click on PvP the rest of their friends and guild-mates do to.

Although the honor system was garbage PvP as presented by Blizzard is for the most part what people got - no huge risks, not dominated by constant ganking. Blizzard tried to convey that their PvP was different from a lot of what people were used to, and that is true despite the fact that the honor system was a steaming pile.

True, but they have had battlegrounds for over a year now, it's going to be fair to say most of the current WoW players were not playing a year ago.  They have to have some kind of churn and less than a year is reasonable.

I found the figures interesting, if a few people are going to go "oh that's easily explained", ok fine, I can run with this new assumption that PVP, designed carefully, has a larger attraction than PVE.  I'm just surprised that everyone is taking it so well.

Edit - Have battlegrounds been in more than a year?

[stray]

Most people don't consider losing months of work a "feature", to most people thats a game destroying bug. Even to the ones that played SB.

Just clear something up for me. Which part was the "game destroying bug"? Losing a city, or losing a city that took "months" to build? There's a fine difference there.

[sinij]

Make PVP safe, fairly risk free, and people will play it. As shown by WoW. Now, if you lost EXP and/or items or even had debt, I would imagine that the number of PVP servers would be cut in half.

Discourage anything with EXP loss, dept and/or item loss and I would imagine it will be less popular.

[Merusk]

I really don't want to argue that SB is better here (though I do think you and Merusk are a little inclined to just point out it's negatives). It's all beside the point anyways. I'm just surprised that a PvP system with less features and possibilities is a success, even though it has an almost identical ruleset to SB's (i.e. I can get ganked and annoyed just as easily by 5 +lvl players in Stranglehorn, and blocked from quests and mobs just as I could outside Khar in SB).

I'm not pointing out negatives,  I'm pointing out falsehoods in your statement.  You can't say "the two are identical" and ignore some very significant differences.  Loss of items and a trip across half a continent are the least of the differences.  The Horde can't raze Stormwind and force you to grind gold for a month out of the noob zones, hoping you don't lose that cash too.  Shadowbane that can happen.  Two very different games, despite the level-based similarities.

[Threash]

Most people don't consider losing months of work a "feature", to most people thats a game destroying bug. Even to the ones that played SB.

Just clear something up for me. Which part was the "game destroying bug"? Losing a city, or losing a city that took "months" to build? There's a fine difference there.

Whats the difference? any city worth anything took months to build and rank up not to mention ungodly amounts of farming.  What you don't seem to understand is that for most people wows pvp system has more features than sb did because it doesn't punish them at every step of the way.  No durability loss vs durability loss, no item looting vs item looting, no property destruction vs city razing, all of those are pluses on WOWs side of the equation, not shadowbane.   For MOST people wow pvp = shadowbane pvp without all the things that made it a bad game, not "pvp with less features".

[Slayerik]

Has anyone considered there's more PvP servers, because Blizzard wants people on them, rather than PvE servers.  As ElGallo mentioned, most PvP servers are at Medium or Low population, compared to the PvE servers.  Blizzard's been pushing PvP for a while, and balancing the game around it (while ignoring the item imbalance.. which is puzzling.) rather than PvE.

  It works out much better for them if everything is PvP.  With their slow churn of content, they can focus on more PvP battlegrounds rather than PvE raid zones which take a lot longer to balance and design.

Of course, no one reason is the catch-all.  It's likely a mixture of everything mentioned, in addition to the initial Bliz fanbase having 'grown-up' with B.net. PvP is simply how games are played.

Are you seriously reading what you are posting?

As a business, do you open more servers for a PVP playstyle to get more people to play them? That makes no sense, you would let the current ones fill up more - less servers = less overhead.

Im not sure how you think Blizzard is "pushing PVP". How many PVP instances have been made? 3 total. How many PVE instances and encounters? Between dragon encounters and total endgame boss fights, probably at lest 15x that...most of which involving a lot more than a simple CTF game.

[Merusk]

Yes, I'm reading it.

I'm just poking the discussion to its retarded endgame faster than 8 pages while repeating the sentiment I've heard from several guild members and other denizens of my realm.  Conspiracy theories and tinfoil hats for all.

Fact is, whever you care most about is what you perceive the developers and gaming community cares least about.  I've seen the stupid in all the PvP vs PvE, Us vs Them (teams), and Class vs Class discussions across all games.  It gets tiresome.

[Lantyssa]

Margalis, If the "the devil is ALWAYS in the details" then at the very least, WoW players were very well informed on the different rulesets before they created their first character.

Maybe.  Considering how many times I heard, "What does RP stand for?" on my RP server, I think people might just pick whichever low usage server is recommended.  Ours was still showing up as a top pick even after they created new servers, so we continued to get flooded.

So I would lean towards a good number choosing the path of least resistance, ie they went where the login server told them to.

[stray]

You can't say "the two are identical" and ignore some very significant differences.

Not to be nitpicky, but I said the two were "almost identical", and that was only referring to how often one is allowed to attack or meet interference from other players (i.e. how "open" the Open PvP is). No, I can't get corpse looted in WoW and yes, there are more safe zones, but in my experience, I found SB no less irritating (as far as roaming around the game world goes). Instead of the item loss of SB, I'd be forced, for example, to use a potion in WoW (which isn't cheap) in order to survive a fight. In bad situations, the cost difference balances out.

On some rare occassions, WoW could be worse. SB didn't have "quests" that one could get blocked from, while, for example, WoW would give me a quest (a very crucial class related one) to gather 30 Troll tusks in Stranglehorn....Only to be met day in, day out with groups of +10 Alliance raiding the zone and ganking my ass. That would never need to happen in Shadowbane.

a trip across half a continent

Sometimes (if you're unguilded -- And rarely anyone was).  

The Horde can't raze Stormwind

I'll give you that. But this is my point about you concentrating on negatives. Stormwind can't be razed, correct, but WoW doesn't have player cities either (a "feature" so to speak). At least SB had cities to raze (that's me being "positive, y'see? ;)) At least SB had zones and guilds to conquer, instead of PvP that doesn't effect WoW's Alliance or Horde factions either way.

loss of items

Acquisition of items too (again with the positivity).

and force you to grind gold for a month out of the noob zones, hoping you don't lose that cash too. Shadowbane that can happen.

I have to wonder what the heck you were farming for a month in this case. In Shadowbane, yes, that can happen --- IF you were you trying to build a city all by yourself. But what lone player would need a city in the first place?

Now, if you're just talking about equipping up for yourself, you'd gather all you need in gold and items in under 3 hours. For repairing, 30 mins.


Anyways dude, I probably lost the overall argument here (whatever it was), but I figured I'd point some of those things out.

[edit] Yikes, spelling.

[Nebu]

Nebu:
I don't. The brand would bring more intial boxes, but most of those people would be gone after the first time their city was destroyed.  Stabilty would slowed the loss of players, but I remember my guild disintergating and there was a lot more complaints then sb.exe.

My city was never destroyed while I was in SB (not that we didn't taunt the uber-alliance), but I do remember razing 4 cities.  Most of them vowed to destroy to us, but they never did because most their membership found other things to do.  And I think that's why the uber-alliance never razed us, they didn't want us quit.  We were their only active oppisition.  The rest of the land was filled carebear neutrals that would fold under the slightest pressure. 

Even in a game that was advertised as open PvP, the majority of players would rather log off than deal with conflict. I am sure many told themselves that they would eventual go hardcore later, but they usually didn't when faced with the realities of the game.  And I don't see how adding the Warcraft theme and the Blizard pollish would change that very basic aspect.

You make very valid points.  It's also silly to argue about what will never come to pass.  I guess we'll have to agree to disagree and be done with it. 

I think there is a larger pvp market out there than many expect.  We've just never had pvp implemented properly enough to attract a majority of those players let alone retain them.

[El Gallo]

. I'm just surprised that a PvP system with less features and possibilities is a success, even though it has an almost identical ruleset to SB's (i.e. I can get ganked and annoyed just as easily by 5 +lvl players in Stranglehorn, and blocked from quests and mobs just as I could outside Khar in SB).

My knowledge of Darktide, Shadowbane and the Zeks is secondhand, but my understanding is that land control was essential to both and could really fuck you up.  My brother told me a story about his guild getting driven to some shitty little island in SB with only one xp-giving mob on it.  His whole guild had to level off that one mob.  In AC, some places were just obscenly efficient for xp and loot compared to others and big guilds could keep those locked down.  I couldn't imagine levelling without Incunabala and the like.  On the Zeks, teams could lock you out of all the good loot and xp as well.

In WoW, the most valuable locations are: AQ, BWL, MC, BRD, DM, Strat, Scholo, BRD, etc.  All instanced and all PvP-free, even on PvP servers.  You are right and make a good point that rolling on a PvP server opens you up for some annoyance while levelling up in places like Hillsbrad and STV, but there are other places to go (even PvP-free instances, if you have a group) and that's a pretty short time in a character's life anyway.

[Johny Cee]

I'll put in a sure to be unpopular opinion, but most of the non-Americans I've met online have been far more mature. My guess is that PVP is more popular because there are fewer jerks. Ditto for Asia. I played in the Taiwanese beta for Lineage 2. I saw 2 reds in the weeks I spent there and neither was griefing anyone.

I lasted like an hour in the US beta. It was nothing but grief ganking and racist, homophobic, misogynist trashtalk.

Edit/Add: You could say a lot of the same things about Eve. Full PVP game and look at the level of maturity and lack of griefing. And it's European dominated.

I played around in the Taiwan L2 Open Beta.  Within 5 or 10 minutes,  a slightly higher level player was attacking me/annoying me trying to trick me into going pink or whatever the inbetween color was so that they could gank me.

From my experience with DAoC in a heavily Euro guild (50/50 North America and European),  there can be as much whining and drama from Euros as Americans.  One Dutch lady was famously obnoxious,  though never to a degree to get her booted.

[tazelbain]

You make very valid points.  It's also silly to argue about what will never come to pass.  I guess we'll have to agree to disagree and be done with it. 

I think there is a larger pvp market out there than many expect.  We've just never had pvp implemented properly enough to attract a majority of those players let alone retain them.

Right, but we are silly for we hashing this whole PvP again away.

What?

Ganking in SB is the same with WoW, except without seiges, player cities, or land conquest. And all I'm saying is that I'm surprised people wouldn't prefer the former (SB). Surprised. Nothing more. Not that I want them to play what I play or force them into things they don't want. Try not to read so much into my post.

I guess I get annoyed with every pvp thread becomes a pining for "Shadowbane, only done right" and other PvP isn't "meaningful."

Concentual pvp works.  It is gaining popularity.  Let's talk about making it better rather than dwelling on what doesn't work, again and again.

[Margalis]

I've never heard anyone explain how "meaningful" PvP doesn't open the door to grieftastic PvP. Maybe it can be done, but as I said before it takes more smarts and talent than most people have.

For the record I am the sort of person who would enjoy meaningful PvP much more than non-meaningful PvP - if I could be protected from the 5% of people who want to ruin everyone's enjoyment.

[Swede]

I played zek for a long time, wow pvp for a short term. Euro, had broadband 98ish, tho no flatrate till 2000

zek - HUGE barriers, w/o a signigicant investment in guild/character = not possible to pvp. Player enforced policies. Almost no pvp being performed outside "consentual" areas (near books vs other players looking for pvp), no griefing at all (i got ksed once in 6 years - he was forced of the server in a week).

wow - no barriers. Safe exp zones, no death penalty. No player enforced policies, pvping daily, much griefing.

---

costs related to pvping = bad for actual pvp, but good for the server. Most of the zekkers didnt engage in pvp, but chose the server for the ability to do something about other players.

[pxib]

There's an old Peanuts cartoon where Lucy (I believe) is telling Charlie Brown about the thrilling end of a football game she saw. A team six points behind, in the last few moments of the game, on their own 10-yard line makes a magnificent quarterback run and TOUCHDOWN! Then they get the extra point and win the game.

Charlie Brown asks, "How did the other team feel?"

[Yoru]

I've never heard anyone explain how "meaningful" PvP doesn't open the door to grieftastic PvP. Maybe it can be done, but as I said before it takes more smarts and talent than most people have.

For the record I am the sort of person who would enjoy meaningful PvP much more than non-meaningful PvP - if I could be protected from the 5% of people who want to ruin everyone's enjoyment.

I code on a MUD that has the 'ultimate' in meaningful PVP - permadeath. Sure, you can reroll, but then you need to acquire skills and resources again from scratch, which isn't the easiest thing to do for newer characters, especially if you come back with an obvious chip on your shoulder. The threat of blowing months or years of character development and connections keeps most players relatively civil to each other - at least, to their face; there's no telling what people say or plot behind each other's backs.

Murderers, especially those who kill randomly, are swiftly and permanently dealt with. Inter-social-group wars are infrequent, but often bloody, events.

Granted, you can claim that since this is only a moderately sized MUD, we're selecting in favor of a more mature playerbase, since most kiddies will avoid anything with less than 20,000 boobie polys these days. Still, while words sometimes get heated, I find that actual PK is relatively rare.

[Tebonas]

 His whole guild had to level off that one mob.  In AC, some places were just obscenly efficient for xp and loot compared to others and big guilds could keep those locked down.

While I laugh my head off from the mental image of a line of people standing in front of a spawn point for a 20 second fight once every half hour or so, that would be the point where sane people say "Screw it" and quit.

[Calantus]

Murderers, especially those who kill randomly, are swiftly and permanently dealt with. Inter-social-group wars are infrequent, but often bloody, events.

Granted, you can claim that since this is only a moderately sized MUD, we're selecting in favor of a more mature playerbase, since most kiddies will avoid anything with less than 20,000 boobie polys these days. Still, while words sometimes get heated, I find that actual PK is relatively rare.

Then what's the point of having PVP?

[Valmorian]

Discourage anything with EXP loss, dept and/or item loss and I would imagine it will be less popular.

EXP loss, dept and item loss outside of a player's control are their own discouragement.

[Sairon]

If we all agree that the majority of WoWs playerbase were virgins to the genre when they began, then I don't think they knew what the hell PvP server really meant.

WoW arrived when I was at uni, I'l use my class as an example. We were a total of 2 people which I know had played MMORPGs before, the rest were gamers but had never tried MMORPGs before. I had already choosen a server since I already was a member of a guild before WoW arrived. I can tell you that nobody of the ones who had played no MMORPGs before really knew what a PvP server was. Something was disabled on the PvE server, while it was on at the PvP server. Most of them had played CS / Quake before and so naturaly they wanted to kill other players. So they all decided on PvP server, but what do you think happend once they had to venture outside of crossroads and get ganked on a daily basis? They whined, and I think it was clearly aparant that they disliked the element of PvP, it was geting in the way of their shiny. The fun part of MMORPGs were still the grinding for them.

If Shadowbane had been made by blizzard and have the production values of WoW, then I think it would've been really succesful. Perhaps more so than WoW, if it would have the same brand advantage as WoW. As long as you have a newbie zone and throw a virgin in there, if they get hooked to the game before they're thrown out in the "real world", then they're already addicted enough to withstand pretty much anything. What a quality Shadowbane would do better than WoW is keep players subscribed. Grinding PvE and meaningless PvP is only intresting for so long.