There will be no real PvP system

[Occhidiangela]

Please forgive snippies.

Bored level-capped players and true deviants.  Note that I say smaller and not eliminated entirely.  One will then be left with the true deviants.

Blizzard should deal with the deviants.

Check.

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.

Yep, I'd hop from game to game in D II avoiding hasslers, and was able to play as much HC as I wanted by keeping a weather eye out for arseholes. The occasional complete arse sprang from game to game now and agin. You'd see the same guy keep cropping up in a dozen games and hostiling everyone with his Trigger Hacked Amazon. That was indeed uncommon in my experience, others may have seen it more frequently than me. The first few times I got PK'd was due to my own carelessness or inattention to the environment. When the scroll and Trigger hacks proliferated, HC simply got to be too much arse pain.

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.

Check. Was that back when Occhi and Ariel

*ANDARIEL! Who runs around naked and spits poison*

would find one another in the same thread at the Lounge? :w00t:

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.

My brain did not wrap around that too well. If a Griefer kills me three times, I am out or he is out? Or, do I have to mug him with my gang three times and call a GM to dispose of the corpse?

4.  Work on a different set of quests than you had planned on. 

Bang. That sore point some folks won't want to budge on, however, if they are that hardover on it, then PvP servers are indeed not for them, RP of PVE are.
Can't agree with you more that "Again, PvP servers are not for everyone."

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. 

Suggest you not try to wrestle with a bear in his own cave, though perhaps you don't get what I mean by CAS. Cluster munitions come in all shapes and sizes and AOE, as do HE rounds. They are not all ATACMS, which take out half a grid square (1/2 a square kilo) a piece if all works well. Nor was I referring to carpet bombing, I was referring to CAS: Close Air Support. CAS is not about covering grid squares with cluster munitions, that is a Air Interdiciton (or Battlefield Air Interdiction if you are a NATO sort.) CAS is Close Air Support, not infrequently Danger Close (a few hundred meters from own troops) and I was using it in the modern, not WW II 1944 "Let's Bomb our own troops and the enemy in Normandy," sense. Not irrelevant, very tactically germane, and as relevant with an 81 mm mortar as with a 500# GP bomb as with a battery six of 155mm shells.

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.

You seem to have skimmed the skirmisher model I suggested as the counter to AOE killers, and went straight to "AoE versus a clump" picture. I probably should have expanded a bit further on the thin mention of the team (albeit small) of PK mages, who use the synergy of differing spells to fix and frag their targets. I would not expect a single mage to pull it off, due to spell cool down times, a factor that did not register in my head while making the previous post.

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!

Got it.

Your experiences on the PvP realm point to a glass half full. I will not pretend to predict the arsehole density on any given server, though I imagine that the grapevine should do a pretty good job of putting the word out on a realm by realm basis.

Your assessment is that the grief PK is, due to being generally antisocial, less likely to cluster, even in small groups. I assume that the gang mentality translates pretty darned well onto the internet, and that the healthy Killers will be doing as you suggest if the content shows up, and that the "deviants" will find enough kindred spirits to cause hate and discontent. I cannot predict whether or not Blizz will do as you suggest -- I support your position on that in any case -- and deal with deviants. I must admit I like what they did to the botters yesterday.

Will population density be low enough to provide "lebensraum?" Your judgment meets my "good enough" standard. The "glass half full" position has room on the table with "chicken little." :lol: And since I already bought the game, and intend to put a critter, probably after Christmas, onto Tichondrius, I am not in the same side of the argument of as Bolty anyway.

Occhi