08-06-2006, 06:49 PM
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.
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.