Neriad is leaving the Lurking Loungers

[Olon97]

But, you missed or ignored the first part.  When you have a two hour chunk of time that, for example, want to skill up some mining in Charred Vale, and complete the harpy killing quests.  How long would it take to get a group together?  It's hard enough sometimes to mine or pick herbs in some contested places.  I can imagine how fun it might be to be ganked while gathering.  It just makes me tingle to think of corpse walking to Charred Vale repeatedly.

I do plenty of half hour to two hour outdoor sessions. Solo. I try not to stand in sight of the road when I'm gathering/questing, and I don't use the /slap or /spit emote on members of the other faction as they pass by, and I do fine. Groups are far from mandatory on a PvP server.

Most people who speak of the horrors of a PvP server have not spent significant time on one, or have never made even a minor attempt to adapt to their surroundings. If you can accept that you'll never gather the herb nodes between Tarren Mill and Southshore in peace, and just gather the same herbs somewhere quieter, you'll find PvP servers perfectly carebear friendly.

To repeat myself:

About 98% of my outdoor playtime has been uninterrupted by players of the other faction, and the number of times I have passed someone by / been passed by far outnumbers the times I've been "ganked".

[Bob the Beholder]

Yeah, it's really not hard to avoid a lot of the gankings. You just gotta be alert, know what's coming, and know an escape route. That's still an interruption, of course, but at least it's not a corpse run.

Of course, there's just nothing you can do about people who are set on being annoying dicks, sometimes. For example, last night, I was there when a level 60 orc warrior attacked a group of four alliance for some retarded reason, right outside of Gadgetzan. Well, not to let someone who is both obviously a moron and my ally die without a fight, I sheeped the highest level enemy, counterspelled the second (a mage), and started nuking the lowest (44, I think). The orc warrior died in seconds for some reason, even though at that point he only had one enemy on him, but the paladin and mage quickly turned on me. I fell, of course. One was 56, and the other, all I know, was higher than 57. But when I ressed, after having some trouble with a druid I was otherwise going to ignore, I mounted up and left... and the mage and paladin followed me. And kept following me. For about three fairly wide circuits around Tanaris. You'd think people would have something better to do wtih their time? Eventually they did catch up, kill me, and leave.


In the Charred Vale, as the given example, it's a pretty big place, full of stuff to cower behind. There are trees and rocks and all that scattered around. So long as you see the enemy first, then there's almost always something handy to put in between him and the big, eye-catching red name above your head. Of course, whether you use that to get the drop on him and kill him before he can kill you, or to see where he's going and what he's doing, and to let him pass through on his own business, is entirely up you. (I prefer the second one. Although if the enemy is significantly lower level, I like to approach slowly, finish off whatever enemy he's whacking on, salute him, burst into dance, and then wander off. Just to mess with him. Or, if the enemy is my exact level, sometimes I'll approach in plain sight, and stand passively until he either finishes his mob and meds up, or goes all panicky and attacks me. Then I kill him.)

[Phoenix]

I do fine.

Good for you. The rest of us get ganked mercilessly.

Most people who speak of the horrors of a PvP server have not spent significant time on one, or have never made even a minor attempt to adapt to their surroundings.

Then there's people like me, who has a level 53 character with a whole lot of /played on a PvP server, who's telling people: "Don't play on a PvP server, you'll get mercilessly ganked wherever you go." Because it's true.

If you can accept that you'll never gather the herb nodes between Tarren Mill and Southshore in peace, and just gather the same herbs somewhere quieter, you'll find PvP servers perfectly carebear friendly.

Hardly. There is nothing "carebear friendly" about PvP servers. There are ways to minimize your gankings, of course, by staying in hiding, going to unusual places, constantly rotating the camera, keep your finger on the Vanish button, buy millions of potions, net guns or engineering stuff and all that crap, but even if you do so, you'll get ganked plenty of times. Trying to quest/level in popular places just makes it unplayable. You just can't get anything done, because you always always keep getting killed. Being 48+ is brutal, you're just free honor points for level 60's.

[Olon97]

Hardly. There is nothing "carebear friendly" about PvP servers. There are ways to minimize your gankings, of course, by staying in hiding, going to unusual places, constantly rotating the camera, keep your finger on the Vanish button, buy millions of potions, net guns or engineering stuff and all that crap, but even if you do so, you'll get ganked plenty of times. Trying to quest/level in popular places just makes it unplayable. You just can't get anything done, because you always always keep getting killed. Being 48+ is brutal, you're just free honor points for level 60's.

Not sure why our experiences are so different Phoenix. I have a couple other rl friends on my server who play even shorter sessions on Tichnodrius than I do and they have a story about some PvP encounter less than once a week.

I did cap before the honor system went in. I'm sure doing one's 50s outdoors is trickier than it used to be, although I solo/farm in many of the zones a 50 would quest in and still avoid most "Honor" squads. As long as the Battlegrounds give better honor/timethan outdoor kill squads, things will likely calm down quite soon back to dedicated griefers in popular (and predictable) areas.

Another factor on a PvP server is some people have long memories. I'm sure some of my non-encounters are due to leaving other people's low level alts alone when I passed them by, and by my guild not being particularly notorious (and by playing mostly female toons - chivalry still has a mild pulse). Join a KoS guild, or partake in the ganking yourself, and Karma will find its way to you.

I've seen the impact of Honor on some of the PvE servers some of my other friends are playing on, and in my opinion, the inability to turn in quests due to the other faction repeatedly ganking NPCs in the hopes of raising PvP flagged enemies looks far more annoying than the rare unfortunate PvP encounter in the wild.

I still would reccomend PvP servers to those less bloodthirsty / massochistic out there, with the single caveat: adapt. I suppose if I hadn't seen the popular areas during Beta I would want some PvE time on a toon eventually just to see certain parts of the world that are annoying to visit alone on a PvP server (Hillsbrad).

[Drasca]

I do plenty of half hour to two hour outdoor sessions. Solo. I try not to stand in sight of the road when I'm gathering/questing, and I don't use the /slap or /spit emote on members of the other faction as they pass by, and I do fine. Groups are far from mandatory on a PvP server.
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Agreed. Gathering is mostly a snoozefest even solo, and comparing with PvE, your gathering will be interrupted regardless with presence of other faction when they're also gathering. On PvP however, you have the option of removing them for your gathering nodes. Escape is usually an option too, but that varies with your class, level, professions and equipment.

Quite simply, the truly uninterrupted solo-game play model does not work in the WoW mmorpg. Other people interfere for better or worse. I've solo'ed 80% of my quests on PvP. The rest, I've had help... and if thottbot.com counts as help, I've solo'ed zero quests.

Does it really hurt to type in general chat: Anyone doing shift-click quests in logbook? or LFG: Quests here. There's usually someone on the same quest, or will be (as this is not a static environment).

Grouping is necessary for certain quests (PvP or no), but is simply encouraged. Pickup groups don't have to take long if you don't stick to doing specifically one quest. Get groups of outdoor quests done rather than insisting on one or the other. Its actually more time-efficient this way, as others can share information on how to do them.

Again, you criticize PvP for points, but you simply don't know how we adapt. The idea of ganking aside, I think PvP is actually grief friendlier because quest givers are actually defended. Beyond that, alliance newbie areas up until 40 are virtually fighting free. Horde have geographically unbuffered contested zones, but generally better intercontinental travel through zepplin towers at major cities, and great Kalimdor flight paths.

[Brista]

I find on pvp servers that there are very very rarely situations that are a significant problem to deal with

Someone kills you while you're fighting a mob. If they're the same level or lower then respawn behind a bush, bandage, then go get 'em. That surely is why one plays on a pvp server as opposed to a pve server. If that doesn't suit you then consider this - that kind of gameplay is the main thrust of this type of server. Battlegrounds, the end-game of pvp will be available on all 3 types. You are complaining about something that the vast majority of pvp players want and something that is a logical feature of the game and server type

If someone kills you who is much higher or it's a group and you're over-powered then the challenge is avoidance. Scout carefully before you respawn, try to respawn as far from your corpse as possible and hit the ground running. In northern Silverpine forest, among the level 10-15 monsters there are occasional 25 elite Sons of Arugal. It's an interesting pve challenge and certainly something to keep alert for if you play in that area. It is no more or less unfair than the gank squads - they are a feature of the game and although you may occasionally die it's a trivial nuisance

I genuinely don't understand people saying that the game is unplayable on pvp servers because of ganking. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying it doesn't bear any resemblence to the gameplay I'm seeing

Have you done all you can to deal with it? Some of your options include:-

- instances
- quiet areas, especially places where there is no opposition flightpath
- find other allied players and quest/grind near them
- home territory. The Barrens goes up to level 25 with 2 instances that would let you pass 40 without ever having been flagged
- relocating somewhere in the same area. People mainly kill you, not for honor points but because they want to quest or gather there. Figure out what they're doing, figure out where that's likely to take them, and avoid them while continuing to operate in the same area
- grouping, either to quest or specifically to kill the opposition
- taking a break
- use the angel to break corpse camping
- if you're being corpse camped at the graveyard start on the edge of your resurrect radius and run immediately. Do that a couple of times and you should be far enough from the graveyard that they can either camp your corpse or camp the graveyard but not both

Clearly none of the "pvp is fine" crowd can really know the specifics of someone who complains that playing is almost impossible without more details. It's hard for us to distinguish between silly complaints ("I died 10 times in a row trying to talk to Nesingwary when there were 10 Horde there!") and genuine problems. If you have a great many gangs of bored level 60s who have absolutely nothing to do but trawl Tanaris, Hinterlands and other 45-55 spots then I can imagine the game becoming extremely frustrating to play in the way that public hardcore Diablo2 X did. I don't think I've ever seen a group that is clearly a death squad for ganking questers. Every group that forms to kill players I've seen or joined has been looking for other players to fight in heavily contested zones and will snack questers in passing but is looking to fight not farm. I think most groups will snack any red they find on the way to whatever else they're doing but the idea that 5 level 60s would camp my corpse for 10 minutes while I go make a sandwich is alien to what I'm seeing in the game

The only time I ever log off after being killed by players is when I want to solo a particular spawn and it won't be possible to do with them there but it is rather far to run back to. That's just being lazy really

[Mirajj]

In northern Silverpine forest, among the level 10-15 monsters there are occasional 25 elite Sons of Arugal. It's an interesting pve challenge and certainly something to keep alert for if you play in that area. It is no more or less unfair than the gank squads - they are a feature of the game and although you may occasionally die it's a trivial nuisance
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They drove my gf absolutely nuts trying to quest in that area, her very first time playing WoW....

[Zippyy]

I hope you're kidding, but in case you're not, I was referring to the fact that for the longest time Neriad was capped at 60 and there was nobody even close to him in level in the guild.  That's a lonely situation for any player.

-Bolty
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My Tich characters are 12 and 13. That's really close to 60 if you use the right scale!

[MongoJerry]

- home territory. The Barrens goes up to level 25 with 2 instances that would let you pass 40 without ever having been flagged

OK, let's not exaggerate. There are a couple of "level 25" quests in the Barrens, but there's no way you're going to get to level 25 in the Barrens just questing. I did all of the quests in the Barrens and Silverpine forest and only got to level 21. Those "level 25" quests are really designed to be done by a group of low 20's players rather than by an actual solo level 25 player.

Regarding the instances, there are three instances in the Barrens, but to get to level 40, you'd have to grind those instances like 100 times to get to level 40. You could say, though, that one could level in many instances and have minimal exposure to being PvP flagged. For example, you could go into Blackfathom Deeps and Gnomeregan and only be flagged for a short time while traveling to them.

However, if you have that mindset, then you probably don't want to be on a PvP server in the first place. The reason one plays on a PvP server is that one actually enjoys the added thrill of conflict and comraderie with other players. PvP adds a sense of danger to outdoor questing that is sorely lacking on a PvE server. Let's face it, a level 55 collection quest is as dry and boring as a level 25 collection quest. But on a PvP server, that same collection quest sends you to places where you might get into a fight with an unknown powerful player-controled mob or group of mobs. And by the way, sometimes you win.

[Phoenix]

Not sure why our experiences are so different Phoenix. I have a couple other rl friends on my server who play even shorter sessions on Tichnodrius than I do and they have a story about some PvP encounter less than once a week.

I guess I'm playing on a server with millions of ruthless Horde-players. EU-Stormscale sucks. :( The three biggest and most powerful Horde clans are all ganker-clans, something they agree with themselves.

(and by playing mostly female toons - chivalry still has a mild pulse).

No such luck for me. Nymeria is a very pretty Night Elf lady, but the smelly Horde seems to want her dead regardless.

I've seen the impact of Honor on some of the PvE servers some of my other friends are playing on, and in my opinion, the inability to turn in quests due to the other faction repeatedly ganking NPCs in the hopes of raising PvP flagged enemies looks far more annoying than the rare unfortunate PvP encounter in the wild.

I guess it depends on how often both events happen. My new PvE characters haven't had a single problem with killed quest NPCs, and my PvP characters have always been ganked frequently. So for me it's a no-brain decision.

[Phoenix]

Someone kills you while you're fighting a mob. If they're the same level or lower then respawn behind a bush, bandage, then go get 'em.

Doesn't work if they're more powerful than you or they've simply moved on.

That surely is why one plays on a pvp server as opposed to a pve server.

That's the problem, really. I never wanted to play on a PvP server in the first place, but all my friends did. I endured all the way until the one-two punch of Honor System + Battlegrounds came into play. The Honor System suddenly made me free honor points for level 60s, and Battlegrounds (fun, exciting, fair and even PvP whenever I want it) being available on all servers finally made me stop playing on PvP servers.

You are complaining about something that the vast majority of pvp players want and something that is a logical feature of the game and server type

I'm not so much complaining about it as I'm trying to warn people away from the servers and tell them of my experience. It's not fun abandoning your level 53 character after all those days /played, and I just want to make sure that people know what they're getting themselves into.

In northern Silverpine forest, among the level 10-15 monsters there are occasional 25 elite Sons of Arugal. It's an interesting pve challenge and certainly something to keep alert for if you play in that area. It is no more or less unfair than the gank squads - they are a feature of the game and although you may occasionally die it's a trivial nuisance

The Sons of Arugal are annoying/challenging, and you can avoid them, and so are the gank squads, BUT: Gank squads are actively looking for you, and they exist all over the world. They're part of the game, but that doesn't mean it can't piss you off. Gank squads are worse because they are actual humans preying on the weak, but Sons of Arugal is just code, with no actual malicious intent.

I genuinely don't understand people saying that the game is unplayable on pvp servers because of ganking. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying it doesn't bear any resemblence to the gameplay I'm seeing

Well, it's different for Horde on Tichondrius than it is for Alliance on EU-Stormscale, then.

Have you done all you can to deal with it? Some of your options include:-

- instances
I don't like doing instances more than a few times, and I can't do them solo, and I don't get much good experience from them either.
- quiet areas, especially places where there is no opposition flightpath
There's not that many of these, especially not in my level-range. And I don't want to avoid some of the biggest and most fun areas with the most quests in the game and instead grind in some desolate place for hours.
- find other allied players and quest/grind near them
Works from time to time, but you can still be ganked by bigger groups or by people more powerful than you. Grinding near someone else cuts the efficiency in half, too.
- home territory. The Barrens goes up to level 25 with 2 instances that would let you pass 40 without ever having been flagged
Alliance has no such luck. After level 17-18 it's all contested areas, and a couple of instances are even in Horde territory.
- relocating somewhere in the same area. People mainly kill you, not for honor points but because they want to quest or gather there. Figure out what they're doing, figure out where that's likely to take them, and avoid them while continuing to operate in the same areaSpending the massive amount of time figuring out what a Horde player is doing it taking away massive amounts of time that I could be using to further my own ends by doing what I want to do instead. I don't like it when other people force me to do something else than what I wanted to do.
- grouping, either to quest or specifically to kill the opposition
See above. Can still be killed by bigger groups or more powerful characters. Doesn't work for grinding or solo-questing either, of course.
- taking a break
Yes. Brilliant. "How can I avoid these problems when I play? Don't play."
- use the angel to break corpse camping
And face a couple of gold in repair costs. This I would never do, it only makes the Horde player succeed in taking something away from me except time.
- if you're being corpse camped at the graveyard start on the edge of your resurrect radius and run immediately. Do that a couple of times and you should be far enough from the graveyard that they can either camp your corpse or camp the graveyard but not both
The problem isn't "I can't ever get away from corpse campers, etc", it's that I don't want to be in these situations in the first place. The amount of time this wastes and the frustration something like this creates is quite simply something I want to avoid.

My comments in bold.

[Olon97]

I don't like it when other people force me to do something else than what I wanted to do.

That's a legitimate reason for leaving PvP for a normal server. Whether or not you get killed, corpse camped, spend time doing the killing (in defense), or being just forced to detour, other players on a PvP server will influence your play experience without your permission.

I joined Tich because I wanted to play a Horde toon (was Alliance on test) and I wanted to play with the Basin. I started when the game was released in November. It wasn't until a couple weeks back when I had my first "you know, killing other players on a reasonably even playing field can be fun!" moment. Even after that realization, I still choose to run/ghandi far more often than I choose to fight/defend.

My first toon hit 60 before honor went in, so I've missed the worst impatcts of that change. I have gotten alts to level 35 since the honor patch with no deaths from enemy players at all (for some reason I enjoy doing the Chen's Keg quest in barrens repeatedly until level 27 - aka grinding :D).

In my experience, being a non-agressive player on a PvP server isn't prohibitively annoying if you're flexible in your play session plan. Certainly fair to say that isn't everyone's experience on PvP servers.

[Brista]

However, if you have that mindset, then you probably don't want to be on a PvP server in the first place.

I don't, re-read my post

It's a reply to Phoenix's complaint about levelling on pvp servers

[Brista]

That's a legitimate reason for leaving PvP for a normal server. Whether or not you get killed, corpse camped, spend time doing the killing (in defense), or being just forced to detour, other players on a PvP server will influence your play experience without your permission.

I think Olon's nailed it

PvP servers are about other people interfering with your game experience. If you don't want that then use the other server types.

I think it's best to be at least mildly predatory to get fun out of the pvp server type. If one is not sure what type to choose I think it's best to ask yourself "if I see an opposition player do I want the ability to attack?" If your answer to that is no then all pvp adds over pve is moments of victimisation

I still find it astonishing that given a choice of pvp, pve, or rp people choose pvp then complain bitterly when pvp-ed. I suppose it's easier for me coming from a background of playing games like D2X which taught me to view random strangers with the ability to kill my toon with great suspicion. Still it does show a certain naievety

I think the question is still open as to whether some pvp servers are unplayable for medium level characters due to gank squads. Every post I've seen on the topic has come from someone who is not temperamentally suited to the pvp servers. I saw a post yesterday on the EU official forums where a player logged off furious after being killed once by some guy, going to a different area then getting killed once by someone else. Neither corpse camped. He logged off in disgust and wrote an impassioned post on the forums. That player really is too delicate to play on the server type he has chosen

I certainly believe that it could be possible that the mid-game has become unplayable on certain pvp servers but where people are describing in detail what happened what they describe comes across as being gameplay that the majority of pvp players simply shrug off. If someone can describe "I went to these 5 obscure areas and they were all camped by death-squads who killed me and cc-ed me. I spent 4 hours and killed 2 mobs and died 40 times" then I'd be much more prepared to concede the case

[Drasca]

"I went to these 5 obscure areas and they were all camped by death-squads who killed me and cc-ed me. I spent 4 hours and killed 2 mobs and died 40 times" then I'd be much more prepared to concede the case
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I've done that before, but I instigated it :)

I was PISSED and sure pissed them off killing over and over. . . but that's the spirit of PvP. You fight.

However, in all situations where I fought, there was always an option out. You're never really inconvenienced that long.

[Brista]

Ah ok, you chosing to pvp for 4 hours when you could easily leave isn't what I'm driving at :)

[Gregorius]

I think the problems are server-specific. After the honor system was released I could not play anywhere for about three weeks (level 30-40 sucks). Now, I must admit I don't feel much for the alliance. However, I have over the past few sessions with my druid found the PvP to be appealing again.

It pretty much comes down to this: Your level of tolerance and the sort of players on your server pretty strongly affect your experience on a PvP server. I think the generation of 30s and 40s who were on the server while Honor went in were a sort of cruel cunning type, while the current group is more amenable to not hosing you. I definitely feel that people on a PvP server are more competitive. The rivalries run deeper. You have to work harder not to die.

I don't think we'll ever convince enough Lurkers that it's not worse being on a PvP server, to really make it not worse (having groups all the time and whatnot). Yes, a million factors will affect your experience: time of day, level, area, character gender... And I resent my older brother's characterization of non PvP players as "cowards" (despite the fact that he's spent about 10x as much time in instances). I think, no I KNOW that the game is much more fun when everybody gets together, which we've already done. I don't anticipate that people are going to give up 3+ characters on Stormrage just for such a "risky" proposition. I don't think that Lurkers on Tich are going to get much farther, but the Basin sounds like a good deal (I'm not registered over there but it can't be that hard...).

Okay, I don't know if this post had any point since pretty much everything has already been said.