There will be no real PvP system

[MongoJerry]

From the article, and from my own interacting with a variety of griefers on line, I will offer you this:  It is not boredom that induces the high level ganker to grief.  While you make some very good points overall, on this issue you seem to be measuring their wheat with your bushel, which strikes me as unsound reasoning.  The griefer/killer has fun effing with other people: that is why he is in the game.  Fun is where you find it, and that is where he finds his fun.

You first simplify my already simplified argument and then try to counter it. That doesn't fly. I said already that there are two types of griefers: Bored level-capped players and true deviants. Bolty's fear of a flood of griefers months from now comes from a fear that there will be a wave of bored level-capped players. My response was that if Blizzard publishes more high end content as they have said they plan to -- battlegrounds, PvP honor system, level capped instance dungeons, and level capped raid content -- then the population of bored level 60 players will be smaller than he thinks and therefore the number of griefers will be smaller. Note that I say smaller and not eliminated entirely. One will then be left with the true deviants.

Blizzard should deal with the deviants.

But even if they don't, the available world is too big, even for a level 25ish character, for the comparatively small number of true deviants to really prevent a person from adventuring and leveling. One might have to choose to work on a different quest series than one had planned to work on at the time, but one will not be prevented from leveling or adventuring.

What disturbs me about Bolty's comments in this thread is the "sky is falling" attitude that would give the impression to a player who has never played on a PvP server that griefing is a regular and pervasive occurance that one can't do anything about -- like, say, PK'ing on the Diablo II servers. Understand that I was one of the most vocal opponents of PK'ing in Diablo II, and some of my sentences on PK'ing on hardcore servers actually got integrated into (read: plagerized by) Sirian's famous diatribe. The situation isn't nearly as dire as in Diablo II, and I found myself surprised by how much I enjoyed playing on the WoW PvP server after the experiencing the cesspool of Diablo II. Very briefly (and I want to expand on this more in an upcoming guide), if one *does* find out through the general chat channel that there's a higher level character in the area killing lower level characters, there are things that one can do and things that actually *do* happen:

1. Group up. There is safety in numbers, and a group of lower levels can kill a higher level character. For example, a small group of level 30's can take down a level 40. It won't help against a level 60, but it will help against the griefers who are, say, 10 levels above you.

2. Call in a higher level guildie. Other more active guilds do this a lot, and I was happy to see many areas I leveled in with my hunter protected by higher level guardians. I put in my time of guarding areas like Duskwood myself. I wish more Lurkers would play on the PvP server so that we could start protecting each other. The act of slowing down a griefer is beneficial in itself, and if a griefer gets stopped too many times, the true griefer will tend to go to a different area where there is easier prey.

3. Page a GM after the griefer dies three times. There is a "three deaths and you're out" policy, and it is incumbant on the GM's to follow through on enforcing that policy.

4. Work on a different set of quests than you had planned on. Playing on the PvP server requires a bit of flexibility on a player's part. A single griefer can only exert a local zone of control of an area, and there are lots of places to quest in any zone that would not run into any given griefer. The only way a an entire zone could be griefed is with a full griefing team, but true deviant griefers are usually antisocial, and anyway if a team does show up, usually zone defence is not far behind. If the griefing really gets to be so bad that you really can't quest at all in a given zone, then as mentioned previously there are plenty of other zones -- outdoors and instances -- where one can go to.

Again, PvP servers are not for everyone, since you have to have somewhat of a thick skin to play there. But at the same time, if one has the right temperment, one can have an enormous amount of fun on those servers that one wouldn't get on the PvE servers. The commraderie among strangers and the level of play is much higher there, and I don't want Lurkers to miss out on the fun simply because of Bolty's "sky is falling" diatribes. If, like Bolty, you like to make a new character every time you reach your mid-30's and if you insist on playing in the worst griefer zones and if you have no flexibility on what order you complete quests, then you're going to have a miserable time. If, however, you are a flexible person, have a little bit of a thick skin, and actually level up your character, you might find the PvP servers to be enjoyable.

COnsider:  How does one get to 40ish if the questing areas and the building block areas, poarticularly those known to harbor good quest/item matches, are infected with harassment day in and day out?  How much time and emotion does one invest in the game?  Part of the answer is "party up, in numbers there is strength." 

Against AoE spells?  Your selection of a mage as griefer is spot on.

Your ensuing battlefield analogy is entertaining but irrelevant. The real life frag bombs you spoke about cover an area of a square kilometer or more whereas a mage's AoE spell only affects a radius of 10 yards. What's more, the mage has to stand in the middle of the enemy party to get it to work, and a mage that does that is a dead mage.

"Once you get out of those areas."  Exactly.  An entire set of guides on "how to deal with arseholes" probably need to be written.   :w00t:  That's one I won't have time for, I have arseholes aplenty to deal with on my day job, don't need that in my leisure activity.

I've been actively thinking of making a guide like this called, "How to play on a PvP server and have more fun." The trouble is, I keep getting sucked into the circular arguments in this thread. Oy!