Guards, Civilians, and Why Outdoor PvP Sucks

[Kevin]

What needs to be added is capturable towns and graveyards.  That is, there should be towns whose entire existance is to be constant battlegrounds going back and forth between the factions.  When your side captures the town, you get quests, special vendors, etc.  If your side doesn't own the town, you need to organize a group to recapture it if you want to do those particular quests and use those vendors.  It's possible that like the mines in Alterac Valley that the town reverts to a neutral state after a time if one side or the other doesn't keep a vigil at the town.  The idea of this is to give a real tangible reward for doing PvP.  And, unlike CP farming where you're really competing against your own side rather than your supposed enemy, this would be something that lets you fight for something for your side and against the enemy faction -- as it should be.

This idea right here, is what I thought PvP should be. I'd PvP if this was the case.
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Agreed.

I stopped playing on PvP servers for a few reasons. One of them was lack of other lurkers. One of them was that PvP still didn't mean anything.

In BG's there is some meaning to it. But world PvP and town raids (and I found town raids to mostly be not enjoyable on either type of server) have no major incentive, other than an exp like grind of honor.

As mentioned by others, the WoW gameplay mechanics are PvE with tacked on PvP. It's also got tacked on crafting too no real integration with the world.

I would PvP a lot more if there were more reason. If defending my territory from a hostile player of the other faction meant something other than a few CP's and lost time for me. I do defend against the rare town raids because keeping the NPC's alive so the unflagged lowbies can still use them does have some meaning. Not much but some.

If there were real reasons to do something I would do more of it, even on the PvE server where I play horde and we are outnumbered 3 to 1 making most non BG PvP futile and frustrating and pretty much anyone loses a 3 on 1 battle or at least they lose it most of the time.

But if there were also a real crafting system, you know where say players could repair damaged structures or build fortifications, customize weapons and armors with items taken from fallen foes (I wouldn't mind being able to craft some more useful items as well along the way either. :) ) PvP would be even better. I would then have another way to connect with the world because I would know that I built that fortification or repaired that wall to help make things safe again for the questers.

There are a lot of ways to make PvP fun and get other people involved in it but the game engine and the game design just don't have some of the tools for it.

I would not mind seeing more PvP. I've played entire sessions on PvE servers where I run around flagged while questing (which allows the other faction to get the drop on me even) and hit a battleground now and then, but I never really enjoyed the more mindless PvP that generally happened, the uneven gank fests (a problem with the Hillsbrad design as well forcing L20s into a zone with L30s because of the different faction quest line set-ups). Getting ganked by a few opposing faction so they could get at a rare resource never bothered me. Having an hour to play and wanting to progress on a quest chain but all the quest givers in the town were dead and then getting corpse camped and chain ganked when trying to run away to get somewhere else, not fun. But much of that is solved by just playing on a PvE server. :)

Yeah, I do think Blizzard needs to revaluate PvP and put some life back into some forms of it.