07-19-2004, 12:40 AM
Quote:Contrary to what a lot of the loud-mouthed PvP supporters on that board, I don't really think he was whining. I'm sure he does know the current rules for the server but was just posting to let people (and Blizzard) know the sort of thing that was happening on the FvF server.
It seems strange to be on this side of the argument, since I was one of the most vocal critics of player-killing in D2. However, there is a great divide between way you interpret his intentions are and the way I read them. Also, I read the same post prior to Bolty's linking to it, and some truly whiny sentences were removed. Either he edited his post to remove them, or he posted his message on multiple forums and decided to change a few things in his postings.
I agree with you that PvP is nowhere near complete and needs a lot of work. Of course, Blizzard has said from the beginning that the current implementation is nowhere near what they have planned, but they're using the current system to test some things out. It is good to let Blizzard know about problems one is experiencing. To this end, he could have said something along the lines of:
"As a Horde player, I've had a lot of problems trying to finish quests in the Hillsbrad Foothills, because of the many higher level Alliance players who stream through the Hillsbrad area and prey on the lower level Horde players in the area. In fact, I've been playing there three days and haven't been able to complete a single quest, even when I'm in a party. What's worse is that today, a group of level 50's came and took over Tarren Mills. They killed all the guards, NPC's, and vendors and then staked out the area to kill any respawns or players who come near. Look, I like PvP combat as much as anyone, but this is getting over the top. Hillsrad, one of the best areas for Horde players in their 20's, has basically become unplayable. I hope that Blizzard can fix this. Meanwhile, I'm heading over to Kalimdor to quest there, because the situation in Hillsbrad is just ridiculous."
A person who writes something like this gets my sympathy. Of course, the issue of Hillsbrad has been beaten to death on the forums, but we do know that the situation has prompted Blizzard to make at least two changes to PvP combat:
1. The new guard system will be extended to all towns in the future. (I don't know how effective the system is, but we'll see).
2. The PvP combat system will be changed to make high level characters not so overpowerful against weaker opponents. I understand that they'll make it so that high level characters won't resist spells cast by lower level characters so much and that lower level characters will be able to hit higher level characters more. A higher level character will still be able to beat a single low level character, but the idea is that a group of lower level characters will have a chance to gang up on and beat a higher level character.
Also, I hope they rework some of the area in and around Hillsbrad. Short of removing Southshore altogether, though, I'm not sure if there are any easy fixes to the problem.
Anyway, back to our original poster, the part where he loses my sympathy is when he starts spouting the boloney about being "trapped" in Tarren Mills and that the only way to get out of the situation is to log off and play another character in the hope the level 50's will go away. At that point, he loses all credibility with me. He decided on his own to play on a *beta* PVP server that has the first implementation of PvP combat. Are there going to be problems? Of course! Any good beta tester should try to find out what those problems are and report them so that they can be fixed. However, any good beta tester should also be flexible enough to figure out a way to get around the problem until it gets fixed. In this case, the poster has chosen not to use the most obvious way to get around the problem -- rez-die a few times to get out of the area -- and hasn't bothered to find out if there might be some other place to go level until the Hillsbrad situation gets resolved, like say Stonetalon, southern Barrens, 1k Needles, or Shadowfang Keep.
Was it right for the poster to point out a problem with the game? Absolutely. But when he crossed the line and painted himself as a powerless victim, when he really isn't, I lose much of my sympathy for him. Also, the fact that he says that there was a fair-sized group there who couldn't think of the obvious solution to get out of Tarren Mills makes me wonder if he made up the whole story.