After the Paladin/Shaman thing: time to tear down the faction wall

[Hedon]

Blizzards move to make Paladins available for Horde and Shamans for Alliance (which I support btw) made me think of the viablility of the Alliance/Horde segregation in general.

As it is now Alliance and Horde compete for the same server ressources, wether they are of technical nature (lag) or ingame goods (Dreamfoil spawns), but there is almost no interaction between the factions. As a matter of fact, the opposing faction could as well be on a completely another server when it comes to assessing the community value of sharing a server. I have even stopped following the raid progression of the Alliance guilds on my server, because it seems so inconsequential. The competition for raid progression is solely within your own faction now (unless you are a member of one of the internationally known uberguilds), as is the e-peen wielding in Orgrimmar or respectively in Ironforge.

The faction wall is a relict of the initial days of WoW, when it was supposed that the game would have a strong PvP component to it, but let's face it: PvP died a long time ago, and I really doubt it will make a comeback and will ever be on par with the PvE content. Every game has it's strengths and weaknesses. The PvE content in WoW is very well done, while PvP is boring and abysmal.

Now the faction wall just hurts the game, as it cuts the server community in half, while consuming full server ressources. Tear down the wall and let us raid together, for better community, greater competition and an improved economy. PvP could be made free for all, as I have never grasped the idea why I should kill the unknown Nightelf while I couldn't smack the Orc which is a pain in the ass to be around.

[oldmandennis]

Well... they are trying to bring PvP back. Something about pvp zones in outland and whatnot. Attempting to fix PvP is a much much more likely solution then breaking down the faction barrier.

[Hedon]

Something about pvp zones in outland and whatnot.

Aye, "PvP Zones and whatnot", sounds promising, doesn't it? :P


PvP will remain inconsequential because, because PvP death is inconsequential in WoW, and there was blue response that they will stick to this philosophy. Good PvP has a social component to it; it should mean something to be killed by someone, so there is some risk associated to it. Ironically PvE is much more risky than PvP. In PvE you have to pay at least repair costs.

PvP without is risk and only with some kind of reward (Honor or PvP faction grind) is basically PvE against human controlled mobs without repair costs.

[MongoJerry]

I don't know about your server, but on Tichondrius, the inter-faction hate is healthy and strong.

Regarding your comments on PvP, I disagree with your implication that WoW PvP is an unfixable weakness. The underlying abilities of all the classes and how they work together in groups are excellent. The basis of PvP is there. I've particularly had lots of fun in WSG, which is still my favorite battleground, playing in intense group vs group games.

However, the flaw in WoW PvP, as you alluded to, was the lack of being able to truly harm your opponent. You suggested that players should be penalized in some way for dying. That would be a horrible method for not the least reason that certain classes tend to get targeted and killed more often than other classes.

No, the real way to get PvP really going so that people care about winning is to have limited resources for people to fight over. It is this aspect that makes world PvP on PvP servers so much better than on PvE servers. I see an Alliance player about to pick that dreamfoil I want? Smite, PW:Pain, Devouring Plague, pew pew. A couple Alliance players are farming the furbolgs in northern felwood? I get some friends to chase them off, so we can farm them ourselves. And of course, Alliance and Horde raids battle over green dragon, Azuregos, and Kazzak spawns. It's in this constant struggle over finite resources where true competition comes in to play.

The best world PvP happened on Tichondrius during the race to open the AQ Gates. At the time, we didn't know that more than one person could get a scepter to open the gate ("Only one may rise," right?), so there was a massive race between the Horde and Alliance to be the one to make the scepter first. There were multi-guild alliances on both sides trying to help each other out. We had full 40-man raids running all over Silithus trying to sniff out Alliance players trying to get carapice pieces for their Alliance champion while we had another 40-person raid spread over the different hives trying to harvest carapice pieces ourselves. And, of course, the Alliance did the same thing. Sometimes, the Alliance had Silithus on lock-down and at other times, the Horde had it on lock-down. At other times, neither side had full control of the zone, and it was always a calculation -- do you send more people to PvP against Alliance and stop farming carapice pieces? Or do you keep people farming carapice pieces and hope you're doing it faster than the Alliance are?

Then, after we got our Champion to neutral with the Brood, we raced around the world to try to finish all the events and at the same time did everything possible to gank and prevent the Alliance from doing the same. And of course, they did the same. We managed to turn in the carapice pieces first, so we got an hour's head start on the Alliance, because whenever their Champion came to try to turn in carapices, he would either be ganked or the Horde would try to lure the NPC away. They had to park a 40-person raid at CH just to let their Champion turn in his pieces. Later, we parked dozens of alts in Duskwood so that if the Alliance raid showed up there, we could pop in at a moment's notice and grief them to no end. They only completed it, because they got 200+ people to show up at 4am and zerged the boss down while the dozen or so griefers could hardly do anything due to the lag.

Later on, when both sides were down to needing Eranikus, and the griefing on both sides was something fierce, the Horde set up a system to prevent the Alliance from completing the event in off hours. The Horde would drag Remulos from Moonglade to distant spots around the world -- sometimes just to cliffs in Stonetalon or Durotar, but one time all the way to far off-the-beaten path cliffs in Un'Goro Crater and Ferales -- and keep him sheeped all night long. This happened for a week.

The Horde won the race. Then, we found out that it didn't matter, because all the resources hadn't been collected yet and multiple people could get the scepter. *Sigh*

So, anyway, back to the original point. You don't need a death penalty, and I think a death penalty would be problematic for many reasons. However, you can have true competition by having a limited resource that both sides wants to collect. The trouble with the current PvP honor system is that you are really in completition with your own faction rather than in competition with the opposing faction. This is the fundamental problem that causes people to feel that there is no inter-faction competition. The basis is already there in WoW to have an excellent PvP game. The trouble is with the reward system that has little to do with fighting against players of the opposing team.

Oh! I just remembered. When the Alliance did their 5 hour BWL run, we raced to kill Anachronos in Tanaris so that the Alliance Champion couldn't turn in the red scepter. We were under the impression that the 5-hour timer still ticked until you turned in the quest, you see. So, we went down there and got two Horde guilds to come help us (one guild was a largely inactive guild who nonetheless were forming up to run Onyxia and when they heard what was going on, they raced down to help us instead -- that was how passionate everyone on the server was over this). As we were killing Anachronos, a couple of Alliance raids arrived to try to stop us. We got him to his 20% life and got the "It is not yet my time" despawn emote... but there were so many players in the area spaming spells and aoe's and stuff that the server couldn't handle the extra chug of Anachronos's death and the server crashed. When it came up again, the Alliance Champion was able to turn in the quest. Oh, well. Those couple of weeks were so much fun.

[Raelynn]

Aye, "PvP Zones and whatnot", sounds promising, doesn't it? :P
PvP will remain inconsequential because, because the PvP death is inconsequential in WoW, and there was blue response that they will stick to this philosophy. Good PvP has a social component to it; it should mean something to be killed by someone, so there is some risk associated to it. Ironically PvE is much more risky than PvP. In PvE you have to pay at least repair costs.

PvP without is risk and only withsome kind reward (Honor or PvP faction grind) is basically PvE against human controlled mobs without repair costs.

From everything that I heard, the outlands will be PvP enabled regardless of server type. I believe they basically alluded to the "no carebear zones" quote when describing it. They are also supposedly working on more world pvp incentives in the outlands and also a "major overhaul" of the honor system coinciding with the expansion.

[lemekim]

@Mongo: There is some irony in that the best PvP experience you had was because of a one-time PvE event. =)

But that is just because the current PvP system is ridiculously flawed in many ways. One is the lack of ability to truly harm your opponent. But there is another issue that I feel must be addressed.

Until PvP is a viable alternative of character progression, PvP will be just a sideshow. What's the point of trying to be the best PvPer, if, in order to get the best gear, you have to spend the same amount of time as a PvE guild in addition to PvPing?

The more effort and the better PvPer one is, the better gear he/she should have access to. With the advent of cross-server battlegrounds, and hopefully, soon match-making system, it can be possible to judge people more on skill rather then time invested - this is no small task however. Ladder-style system would actually be possible given the large number of people participating, and the defeat in such system (because of the lowering of rank) can actually mean something. There have been tons of great ideas floating around on how to achieve better Honor system, we just have to wait and see I suppose.

[oldmandennis]

Those experiences were only fun and fair because you lucked out and were on a server with a relativly balanced population, Jerry.

Of course theses aren't perfect numbers, but they are the best we have.

Tich - 11:10
KT - 4:3
SR - 2:1!!
All Servers - 5:3

4 to 3 is pretty stiff odds, especially when the alliance are so far ahead of us in PvE progression. And many servers are worse off then we are.

Meaningful world PvP is a pretty long shot to get balanced properly. The best I am hoping for is that it is inconsequential, like this EPL/silithus thing looks to be. It would be super lame, but maybe an experience bonus/penalty for the weaker side, combined with the chance to re-race your charater when you buy the expansion might fix things.

Battlegrounds could be fixed by matchmaking/laddering. But I've beat that drum enough.

[swirly]

I don't really want to see the faction wall come down completely, but I would like to see a huge, long, and hard quest chain that would make a character friendly with the opposing faction. This chain would have to be so long and so hard that only a couple people on a server would ever get it done. Some of the quests in the chain could even require that you get somebody of the opposing faction to help you. I'm not really sure how it all could be worked out so that it was long and hard enough to limit who does it, but it seems like it would be fun to have a couple of characters on each server that could be friendly with both sides. There would be draw backs to their decision as well though. They would no longer be able to PvP (except maybe in an arena where even your own faction is killable) because it would be wrong for them to kill either side. The plusses would be huge though. Not being able to be killed by any player, because they are friendly to everybody. Being able to quest, instance, raid with the opposing faction as well as your own. It would be a truely huge achievement for a character. Which is why the quest chain to make it happen would have to take a truely huge amount of effort as well.

Its not something I ever really see happening. The work/benefit ration just wouldn't be worth Blizzard's time. Why develop such a quest chain that only ever really effects a few people per server when you can better spend your time doing things that will effect a larger body of people. Still, I think its a fun idea to think about. : )

[Urza-DSF]

From everything that I heard, the outlands will be PvP enabled regardless of server type. I believe they basically alluded to the "no carebear zones" quote when describing it. They are also supposedly working on more world pvp incentives in the outlands and also a "major overhaul" of the honor system coinciding with the expansion.

Feh! That is an absolute load of crap for players who joined PvE servers specificially because they were not interested AT ALL in PvP. Having that garbage foisted on us while essentially being told "stfu lrn2play" is infuriating. I *hate* the fact that factions can't communicate the same as I hate how only certain races can be certain classes and all that garbage (OT: theres another reason I hated 2nd Edition DnD).

If the expansion really does force us all to essentially play PvP I'm moving on to something else, been meaning to try Auto Assault anyway.

[Monkey]

From everything that I heard, the outlands will be PvP enabled regardless of server type. I believe they basically alluded to the "no carebear zones" quote when describing it. They are also supposedly working on more world pvp incentives in the outlands and also a "major overhaul" of the honor system coinciding with the expansion.

That was mentioned a long time ago in a pre-E3 article from an obviously pro-PvP reporter. As Blizzard has reminded us since the introduction of the Alliance's Space Shamaladins, they change their mind quite frequently. At this point, none of us should be surprised if the expansion gets delayed until 07 and the races all are replaced with different colors of the same bunny.

[Hedon]

However, the flaw in WoW PvP, as you alluded to, was the lack of being able to truly harm your opponent. You suggested that players should be penalized in some way for dying. That would be a horrible method for not the least reason that certain classes tend to get targeted and killed more often than other classes.

Good point. Haven't experienced "real" PvP for so long, that I didn't thought of that. Also it would disproportionally benefit stealth classes like rogues and druids who can pick their fights. Another problem would be the death of PvE specs, since no one would pick them, if losing in PvP would mean some real penalty.

So agreed you have good point here.


But oldmandennis also has a point regarding the unbalanced faction ratio on many servers and what it would mean for fighting over ressources. This strengthens my argumentation above: away with the Horde/Alliance factions and implementing free for all PvP. No factions, no faction imbalance. As I pointed out it would also help with raiding competition, economy and community issues in general.

[Watto44]

But oldmandennis also has a point regarding the unbalanced faction ratio on many servers and what it would mean for fighting over ressources. This strengthens my point: away with the Horde/Alliance factions and implementing free for all PvP. No factions, no faction imbalance. As I pointed out above it would also help with raiding competition, economy and community issues in general.

If they implemented free-for-all PvP, Azeroth would go absolutely mad! I know there are a few horde players that I'd be hunting relentlessly.

Also, to say that PvP is boring and abysmal is, IMO, technically incorrect. The honor grind is boring and abysmal. PvP was - and still is to a degree - player driven content. You want PvP? Go and find it! If you manage to extricate yourself from the honor/faction grind, it can still be like that, where you're doing something not because of the rewards but for the pure pleasure of it. I still hold hopes for the changes to the honor system being implemented in the Burning Crusade.

For myself, if you removed the faction wall you would, ironically, remove a lot of the community aspect of the game. Competing and fighting with the opposing faction - and the innevitable forum trash talking - is where I feel most grounded in my server's community. If you replaced that with a free-for-all environment it would its "focus" with players living in constant fear of everyone and no sense of "them and us" scenario that makes PvP so enjoyable.

Suffice to say, if you remove the factional PvP without replacing it with something better, you'll be removing the only reason I still play this game. I doubt people like myself are the majority, but I'm sure there are plenty of us.

PS. You say that death has no consequences like someone who has never been camped or forced someon to use the spirit rezzer*.

*I don't condone the actions. Well, not too much anyway. :shuriken:

[oldmandennis]

Good point. Haven't experienced "real" PvP for so long, that I didn't thought of that. Also it would disproportionally benefit stealth classes like rogues and druids who can pick their fights.

There are enough asshats out there that any kind of penalty for PvP is out of the question. Hillsbrad is bad enough when all you are losing is the time on a corpse run. If there was a peanalty (XP or gold) as well... /gamequit.

In related discussions, people suggested attaching DK's to PK's against players a certain number of levels lower then you. In response, bliz has repeatedly said they have no intention of trying to arbitrate between "fair" and "unfair" kills, given that 10 or so level 30's can take down most level 60's.

[MongoJerry]

From everything that I heard, the outlands will be PvP enabled regardless of server type. I believe they basically alluded to the "no carebear zones" quote when describing it. They are also supposedly working on more world pvp incentives in the outlands and also a "major overhaul" of the honor system coinciding with the expansion.

No, no, no. That was a gross misinterpretation of what Blizzard said by some random idiot who didn't know what he was talking about. What Blizzard was talking about was that each zone would have PvP objectives that players cam engage in if they wish to -- the new "spice" game in Silithus and tower objectives in EPL that will be introduced in 1.12 are precursers to that. PvE players will not be flagged unless they specifically choose to participate in the PvP aspects of the zones. Each zone will have plenty for the PvEer to accomplish as well, so you will have a choice in the matter.

Those experiences were only fun and fair because you lucked out and were on a server with a relativly balanced population, Jerry.

Absolutely, oldmandennis, but you missed the point of my post. The post was demonstrating that competition can be drawn around players fighting over limited resources. It does not mean that the limited resources have to be tied to world PvP. It could be tied to battlegrounds as well, where faction imbalance isn't such an issue.

However, one other world PvP event that I had fun with today was the fishing tournament. I helped a guildmate fishing the tournament by alternatively guarding him and ganking alliance fishermen during the tournament. Of course, a larger alliance party -- about 4-5 of them -- was doing the same. We spent so much time stopping them and they us that neither of our groups won, but it was fun. Again, what was fun about it was that there was a limited resource that we were fighting over. "PvP with a purpose" and all that.

[oldmandennis]

It does not mean that the limited resources have to be tied to world PvP. It could be tied to battlegrounds as well, where faction imbalance isn't such an issue.

I'm not sure what you are suggesting here. "Congradulations for winning AV! Here is 10 Dreamfoil!"? "Hold the blacksmith for 5 min and everybody gets a stack of Thorium Headed Arrows"?

However, one other world PvP event that I had fun with today was the fishing tournament. I helped a guildmate fishing the tournament by alternatively guarding him and ganking alliance fishermen during the tournament. Of course, a larger alliance party -- about 4-5 of them -- was doing the same.

The fishing tournament can be fun. Last one I got the hat. The STV arena is fun too. I chain pulled two mages this morning, and got some bracers I should sell for about 10g. Rawr! But both are still inconsequential enough that faction imbalance doesn't rear its ugly head often. If they dropped real, end game rewards, they would be camped silly.

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

In related discussions, people suggested attaching DK's to PK's against players a certain number of levels lower then you. In response, bliz has repeatedly said they have no intention of trying to arbitrate between "fair" and "unfair" kills, given that 10 or so level 30's can take down most level 60's.

Not to mention the endless potential for DK-griefing. Sneak in some level 20 characters into your Hillsbrad zerg and clobber the next people to AoE with DK's. You can't implement any system with any reasonable potential for abuse, because it will be discovered and exploited quite quickly.

I'm not sure what kind of penalty you could really propose for PvP death that wouldn't make people berserk though. Players can't lose equipment, as that would be insanely bad for raiders, and making people lose experience is a terrible hack - you don't gain experience (much) for PvPing, why should you lose it? Maybe allow looting for money, but that would suddenly make camping people profitable. I can just imagine the Night Elf highwaymen setting up camp outside Dire Maul...

I think the direction they're going in is the best possible for the type of game WoW is, where dying doesn't make you specifically lose anything but denies you access to some sort of bonus content.

[TheWesson]

Not to mention the endless potential for DK-griefing. Sneak in some level 20 characters into your Hillsbrad zerg and clobber the next people to AoE with DK's. You can't implement any system with any reasonable potential for abuse, because it will be discovered and exploited quite quickly.

I'm not sure what kind of penalty you could really propose for PvP death that wouldn't make people berserk though. Players can't lose equipment, as that would be insanely bad for raiders, and making people lose experience is a terrible hack - you don't gain experience (much) for PvPing, why should you lose it? Maybe allow looting for money, but that would suddenly make camping people profitable. I can just imagine the Night Elf highwaymen setting up camp outside Dire Maul...

I think the direction they're going in is the best possible for the type of game WoW is, where dying doesn't make you specifically lose anything but denies you access to some sort of bonus content.

i've thought that there should be a zero-sum honor system. You get killed, a small fraction of your 'honor' gets transferred to the person/group that killed you. If a member of a group gets killed, the group shares the dishonor ... protect your priest!

People have worked out ladder systems in great detail; what I'm suggesting is a kind of ladder system for honor. There's plenty of issues to be worked out -- decay of honor/dishonor? normalization? etc -- but it ought to be workable.

[oldmandennis]

Well... what would be the advantage of zero sum?

It penalizes people or groups that die often. Would PvP be more or less fun if everybody was turtling? Would that make world PvP more dangerous and exciting? Or would it be more frusterating to be ganked.

[Monkey]

i've thought that there should be a zero-sum honor system. You get killed, a small fraction of your 'honor' gets transferred to the person/group that killed you. If a member of a group gets killed, the group shares the dishonor ... protect your priest!

People have worked out ladder systems in great detail; what I'm suggesting is a kind of ladder system for honor. There's plenty of issues to be worked out -- decay of honor/dishonor? normalization? etc -- but it ought to be workable.

I am afraid that zero-sum just further penalizes lesser-geared or lower-level players in the current system. One of my biggest problems with the honor system on PvP servers is that it isn't half as difficult to kill someone who is already fighting a mob, but it is potentially worth more than half as much honor. (Honor is awarded based on the damage your group deals to a target during the fight; damage from a mob decreases the available honor in proportion to that damage).

The threat of the 'other side' (or being that threat) is the thrill of a PvP server, but the "Honor" system provides greater rewards for ganking than for a fair fight. If zero-sum rules were added to this system, then lowbies would potentially have levels and levels of dishonor to grind off.

[Descended]

Well... what would be the advantage of zero sum?

It penalizes people or groups that die often. Would PvP be more or less fun if everybody was turtling? Would that make world PvP more dangerous and exciting? Or would it be more frusterating to be ganked.

A zero sum, grouped honor system might work better if combined with some other balancing systems:

• A chess-style rating system: the % of honor taken from an opponent degrades as their honor rating falls below yours, and increases as it rises above yours. <>
  
• Level ratios could affect this % (so that killing someone lower level than you significantly degraded the amount of honor you received). <>
  
• A faction-strength-within-short-radius system (say... 40 yards) might prevent a squad from receiving disproportionate honor for beating down a single, unprotected high honor opponent.<>
  [st]
  With those honor distribution rules in place, you cause a situation where honor grinding with a good PvP group in battlegrounds is ineffective (since participating may cost you honor if you are killing weak opponent after weak opponent but then getting killed by one of those low honor opponents, who then takes a large chunk of your honor due to you significantly higher honor). Equipment rewards for excellence in a particular battleground would still be there, but repeated participation without repeated victory would not move up up the PvP rank ladder. If you want (and this is a good design question -- do you really want people to be able to grind in battlegrounds for PvP rank?), you can use the cross-server battlegrounds large pool of opponents to do ratings matching for the smaller battlegrounds. With a ratings matching system in place, this system should give more honor to those with more skill/better equipment, rather than to those with more time.
  
  So what prevents someone from being very lucky or very carefully stalking isolated opponents in world PvP and soloing them to gain exceptional amounts of honor without regularly exposing themselves to much risk (and therefore the opportunity for skilled opponents to puncture their ballooned honor pool)? I say: Nothing. If the ranking system grants slow, if steady, rank improvements, a character would have to remain lucky for a statistically improbable length of time in order to gain high rank without having the skill to show for it. As far as the stalking rogue or druid, solo ganking similarly leveled opponents in Stone Talon or Felwood or EPL goes, the soloer's risk versus reward ratio gets worse over time, as eventually the known presence of a lone, high ranked world PvPer is going to attract skilled foils to that character, who can gain a lot of honor simply because they are skilled and their class is appropriately set up to handle that particular stalker.
  
  This situation, then, requires a change in the way that players gain PvP rank. I like the idea of PvP rank degradation over time and I like the idea of rank gain being a slow, incremental process where only a fixed percentage of a faction's population is eligible for each rank each week and high ranks cannot be passed through quickly. Since honor rating would depend much more on skill than on number of kills, some additional measure of participation would be required to make sure that those with high honor actually deserved to be considered for rank promotion each week -- we don't want the grind, but we don't want someone to gain high honor and then just sit on it and slowly gain high rank without anymore participation. Perhaps either a significant number of kills or a minimum relative increase in an individual character's honor rating would be an appropriate measuring stick for participation; won battlegrounds matches or some measure of success in the new EPL and Silithus world PvP senarios could form alternate "proofs of participation".