PvP on PvE Stormrage

[MongoJerry]

I would not be surprised to see that, over time, the PvP servers slowly but surely reduce in population as word spreads that you can have just as much fun (town raids, etc) over on the Normal servers, but without all the pointless ganking, corpse camping, and griefing.

Um, no you can't. What pisses me off about your posts, Bolty, is that you act as an expert on a subject that you in fact did not experience yourself. Yes, you "played" on a PvP server but you kept starting your characters over and over again and playing in the same areas over and over again, so you never got to see a much wider world. In addition, you mostly played in areas like Redridge or Duskwood, alliance areas designated as "contested," so of course you rarely saw normal PvP fights, because no horde players of your level would actually go to where you played. If you actually traveled outside your comfort zone and actually leveled up your character a little bit, you would have seen a much different scene.

The truth is that the level 60 running by and slaughtering you is a rare event in the life of a normal character. The more common occurancce is fights between players and parties mostly of your own level. Are they often unfair fights like 2-on-1's and such? Absolutely! But then, you can also go grab a party and get revenge on them and drive them out of the area. What's great is the intensity of always watching your back and the social aspect of grouping up so that you can watch each other's back. Let's face it, the outdoor areas are a boring grind. The chance or threat of spontaneous PvP combat plus the comraderie that comes from complete strangers teaming up to face the other faction is what makes the PvP server fun.

Regarding PvP lite on the PvE servers, the thing is that you really don't have much of an option for PvP "whenever you want it." If some group of the opposing faction enters your territory and starts mocking and taunting everyone (yes, still possible even with the language barrier), you can't do a damn thing about it. Also, on town raids, you can't head them off at the pass. Instead, you have to wait for a raid to actually enter a town and attack some NPC's to get PvP flagged. And once a raid member rezes again, you have to wait for them to attack another NPC. Come on! That's not a real battle. And, most importantly, you don't get to participate in the dozens of small party skimishes over sections of territory on wide ranging terrain that are always occuring on the PvP server. On the PvP server, you feel the "war" aspect of the game much more vividly, and it adds a fabulous dimension to the game.

With Battlegrounds implementing PvP rewards on a PvE server, it becomes even more pointless...

You tease me about mentioning yet-to-be-released features, although I usually take a wait-and-see attitude on them. And yet, here you are once again touting Battlegrounds, a yet-to-be-released feature. We don't know yet what Battlegrounds will be like. We have some vague references that they'll work like raid instances where two raid groups of opposing factions enter the raid portals and face off. If that's the case, then these battlegrounds are going to take a tremendous amount of coordination to organize -- not only your team but the opposing team. They could also be like raid instances where a person would be obligated to stay for a couple of hours, rather than the "I have a fifteen minutes before I gotta go, let's go slaughter some Alliance!" that some people might want. Plus, if you're not in a major guild, you might find it hard to get into some of these Battleground raid groups.

Or, if Blizzard has abandoned this idea and has moved to a "let everybody in" model of Battlegrounds, then all battles will be determined by whichever faction throws the most bodies into the Battleground (read: Alliance). And in this case, you won't have much choice to go find a more even fight, because the small number of Battlegrounds will be clogged up the same way.

There are two different ways of looking at this:

1. PvE: I am safe to travel throughout the world without being attacked by any player. I can also, on rare occations, participate in some small PvP activities if a major raid is organized, and I might be able to do some stuff in the not-yet-implemented Battlegrounds.
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2. PvP: I can participate in PvP activites anytime day-or-night 24/7. These activities can be one-on-one fights, small party skirmishs, large party skirmishes, or full-scale raids. And if I want to take a break from PvP (or even the threat of PvP), I can enjoy the PvE aspects of the game stress-free in instances and in less populated zones.<>
   [st]If you want to focus almost exclusively on the PvE aspects of the game and only want to PvP on very rare occations -- and in times and locations not necessarily of your choosing -- then the PvE server is for you. If, however, you want to be able to participate in PvP combat at any time and yet at the same time want to be able to do a lot of PvE stuff as well, then try out the PvP servers.