Hello all!

In keeping with my tradition of saying whatever the hell is on my mind at the time, let’s talk about world PvP.

I’m not gonna talk about nice, organized, determined armies of players rolling on up to take out the enemy leaders and get Bears to ride. Oh, no.

I’m not even talking about PvP in areas with specific PvP goals and objectives to fight over, such as in Eastern Plaguelands, Silithis, Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh and Nagrand.

I’m talking simply about a small quest hub in a remote location, far from major trade routes or capital cities, guarded by flagged NPCs of low level… and the single level 80 of the opposite faction that comes in, kills everyone, and then camps the respawns until someone comes along, in which case he runs like a terrified rabbit afraid of being thrown in the stew pot.

PvP is an inherent part of World of Warcraft. Even if you’re on a non-PvP realm/server, there are PvP opportunities everywhere you go. How? The NPCs, including quest givers and Flight Masters, are all flagged.

Since they are flagged, the opposing faction can attack them at will, and kill them.

If you don’t like it, presumably you can get off your duff and mount a counter-offensive of your own, driving off the enemy players and defending the exposed village.

It sounds nice, doesn’t it? It sounds quite reasonable.

But let’s paint a picture for a moment, a picture that somewhat resembles reality.

You are on your happy little low level character, exploring a part of the world you’ve most likely seen 10, 20, 50 times before. Maybe it’s actually your first character and you have no idea what’s waiting around the next corner. Maybe it’s your first character of the opposing faction, and you’ve never seen these starting zones before.

Whatever.

There you are, moving along, questing from point to point, playing the game in the way that you want, rolling along.

You complete several quests, doing a circuit of the zone, and then you move on in to the quest hub to turn these in, and either pick up the next set of follow ups, or, if you’re lucky, level up and fly off to train.

As you make your way to the quest hub, the messages start coming in on the World Defense channel; “XXX is under attack.”

Ah, crap.

Sure enough, you arrive in time to see one or two level ??? players of the opposing faction finish off the Flight Master. All the quest givers are dead, and the enemy is mostly ignoring the guards, and they’re all a paltry level 14 anyway. The village guards defending the town aren’t even a mid-afternoon snack to a level 80.

So, you’ve got some choices. Do you have max level toons of the same faction as your alt? If so, you can then log out on that character, log in on your other character, and make your way to the remote region your alt was at to defend the village. You can even call your guild to arms, if some are online, to come help.

Have you ever tried that? I have. What happens? 9/10 I’ve found the little cowards have long since run off.

What about that 1 out of 10? In those cases, the guys seem to head into the surrounding foothills, perhaps, because if you hang out for 15 minutes and then log out, sure enough, as soon as you’re back on your alt, boom, NPCs getting killed again. Only this time, when you log back into your high level character that is just waiting there, you find that they called in stealthed reinforcements that are waiting for you.

Once a few other high level characters of your same faction start showing up, though, it all degenerates into a game of “Try and find where the cowards are hiding, waiting for you to get bored so they can go attack the village NPcs again.”

“Anybody see where they went?”

“Alliance Priest and Warlock south of Crossroads”

“How far?”

“Priest hearthed.”

“Warlock in Crossroads, anybody out there?”

“Coming back in.”

“Warlock heading north.”

You get the idea, and have seen it yourself, I’m sure.

What I have never yet seen is anyone that started killing the NPCs, and then, when equal leveled players come to fight them on an even numbers basis, stand their ground and fight an evenly-matched battle. Ever.

So.

Is the PvP in this situation adventurism as planned by Blizzard? An opportunity for a few players to be the spark that ignites a forest fire of unplanned, out of control PvP?

There was a time when such PvP was frequent. Anybody else remember the insane, awesome battles of Tarren Mill?

I think there were entire months back in the day where, if you were bored, all you had to say in Guild chat was “Tarren Mill?” “Sure, let’s go.”

And when you got there, you were sure to find an out of control battle raging between Horde and Alliance, even on PvE servers.

What’s changed? HAS anything changed?

Are the lone opposing players killing NPCs in remote villages just trying to get some PvP started? Or are they really griefers, looking to feel powerful in their pathetic, powerless real lives by annoying other people too weak to fight back?

I may have phrased that a bit strongly. :)

I think the point stands. If you want actual player versus player action, real challenges against real opponents that can fight back, your skill versus theirs, there is no end of opportunity, from Battlegrounds, Arena battles, PvP zone objectives in Silithis or Hellfire Peninsula, Wintergrasp for the highest level, etc.

What is the draw, where is the challenge, in seeking out the lowest level yet most remote village possible, and then killing all the NPCs there and running like hell?

I hesitate to label the players who do this asshats, because to be honest, I have no idea if, in my limited understanding of the PvP community, there are real, tangible challenges and risks involved in this.

But I hesitate to label such players as adventurous, because if they had any courage, especially in a game where there is no consequence for character death in PvP, they’d stand their ground and fight instead of running like a scared bunny. 

What is your take on this? What have been your experiences with this kind of thing, and do you know any of the players who do this? Are you one of them? What is their objective? Is there one, beyond pissing off lower level players who can’t fight back?

I think it’s clear that, as far as Blizzard is concerned, the system is intended as it is. But are we using it right?

Once, it cost you Honor to kill an NPC even by accident, if that NPC wasn’t an honorable conbatant. Further, if Blizzard felt there was truly anything wrong with it, they could make the NPCs be Neutral instead of flagged, in keeping with the current sort-of neutrality that the Argent Tournament was supposed to represent.

Obviously the one thing they can’t do is make all NPCs, regardless of location, be max level AND flagged. In some areas, opposing faction players have no choice but to ride perilously close to enemy villages to get to other areas. Intentional enemy choke points are built in, and it’s mighty smart of the factions (and designers responsible for it) to do so. Why command the remote passes out of the way, when you can fortify a position in the middle of the trade routes?

But make those NPCs max level and flagged, and as you run by hoping to resume questing on the other side… squish! 

I really am curious what your experiences with this are. I’m trying like heck to not pass judgment on players that do this without having a much better understanding of why.

Just the other day, I was on my Belf Hawt Biker Chick, in Ghostlands, and running into Tranquillien with a billion quests to turn in, and just like I described, all the NPCs are being killed, every single one, by a single level 80 Retribution Paladin.

As soon as they were all dead… he rode briskly away.

All I could think at the moment, as I waited for respawns, was, “Damn, he went to a lot of work to get all the way up here to kill these NPCs. Even flying to the Troll raiding area FP Alliance have available, that’s a lot of effort to go through, flying through the long zones in between Ironforge and there. What is the payoff? What am I missing? What could he possibly get out of that?”

“Am I supposed to be upset? Time for a Mountain Dew!”

I had a fun conversation with Ruuaarr after a Heroic ToC run a few nights ago, and I thought the conversation was well worth relating here for a bit.

Ruuaarr is a member of our guild, and is known mostly for playing his Hunter.

I’ve played with Ruuaarr in raids like Naxxramas, in 5 man runs, and more recently in our takedown of Onyxia.

He’s always provided some serious DPS, and can be counted on to play attentively and with great skill.

That being said, he’s a bit of an oddity in our rather laid back social guild.

You see, Ruuaarr’s first love is not for PvE content in groups.

Nope, Ruuaarr is, instead, a devoted afficianado of PvP.

Any time of the day or night, you could expect to see Ruu in Wintergrasp or one of the other Battlegrounds, presumably pwning face.

Because of my PvE background, the world of PvP for me is a bit like a closed book. Talking about it, aside from telling stories about this really bitchin’ Alterac Valley I did on my Druid back in Burning Crusade whilst grinding towards some epic shoulders, consists of ”PvP, huh? So… fun, then?”

The conversation started when Ruuaarr dropped his third Fish Feast for the group, after a ’I died and ran in and died and ran in but the bastards are dead so screw it’ encounter.

I commented that I really needed to get to farming some fish to give to him, since he was being so very generous with dropping the Fish Feasts for the group.

Ruuaarr replied that he didn’t mind, he had plenty of fish. All the fish he could ever want.

He got them while fishing for Rogues to gank in Wintergrasp.

Well, there’s a story just begging to be told there, so I had to learn more.

“What I do”, Ruuaarr said, “Is go fishing in Wintergrasp, and I’m the bait. Rogues can’t resist trying to kill someone just standing there fishing. So, they stealth in to take me down, and that’s when I destroy them.”

Wait… somehow, this sounds like you’re cheating, and destroying these poor unsuspecting Rogues… but to do it, you have to stand there motionless and fish. Just standing there. And you have to wait for them to come in and make their attack.

“Yes, they come in to gank me, and when they do I kill them. That’s why I’m there. But I get a lot of fish, too.”

…..

That’s awesome. But this leads me to ask… why the vendetta against Rogues?

“Back when I first started playing, my son had been playing for a while and liked PvP. I wanted to try it, and went to join a Battleground. My son warned me, wait until I was 28 or 29, but I didn’t listen. I went in at level 25, and I was killed instantly. There was this Rogue there, and he just stayed and killed me over and over. The match seemed to last forever, and I was killed by this one Rogue 18 or 19 times. I refused to stop resurrecting, and I refused to stop playing, but he spent the entire match doing nothing but waiting for me and then killing me. That was when my war against the Rogues began.”

Well, I can certainly see how that might irritate a person. You must really hate people that corpse camp, after having to deal with something like that so soon in your playing. 

“I don’t hate them, but the way I see it, if you are going to corpse camp someone, you deserve what you get. There was one time, my son was playing and got killed, and the other player corpse camped him, killing him over and over for 15 minutes or more.”

“I logged onto my main, and went and found the player corpse camping him, and killed him.”

“Then I sat on him and corpse camped him back, killing him five or six times.” 

“He logged off, logged onto an Alliance character and asked why I was being an asshat and corpse camping him.”

That would make my day, personally.

It sounds as though you mostly like playing to have the challenge of an evenly matched battle. What are your thoughts on twinking?

“Twinking would work a lot better if they opened the pool of players to be cross game, and not just cross battlegroup. There just aren’t enough players in one battlegroup taking part. I think looking for the most advantage you can is built into the desire to twink… to be able to gank your opponent mercilessly and be overpowered. There are people that enjoy twinking their character to play in the twink only matchups, but if Blizzard wants that to be a success, they need to open the potential pool of players. There just aren’t enough in one battlegroup right now.”

It sounds to me like you don’t look for opportunities to destroy weaker opponents. Do you always play looking for an even match, in level at least?

“There was one time, and I still really feel bad about this. The arena in Stranglethorn Vale, I don’t know if you’ve done it, but it’s a free for all arena. You can kill people of your own faction in it too.”

“I was in there once, and there was a big fight moving all around, and I was taking on any target I saw, and I saw out of the corner of my eye someone enter the arena area and become flagged, and I took him down instantly. It turned out to be a level 31 or so of our own faction. I still feel really bad about that, I normally look to see what level someone is first, but in the arena I saw someone flag and just turned and took him down.”

Ruuaarr… thank you very much for giving me this look into the life of a PvP player, that truly does not fit in with any of the stereotypes I see all the time.

It was really refreshing to talk to someone that loves the PvP game, someone that really lives for the hunt and the hair trigger tension.

I hope that your story will help a few other folks remember that PvP isn’t all about corpse camping or ganking lowbies. A lot of very mature people love it too.

They just don’t get all the publicity. And maybe they should.

…with a title that just about banned it from the blog.

But I’m going to take a chance on it, and leave you with a warning that the title is inappropriate, but the subject matter is hilarious…

I’m thinking of respeccing elemental after watching this…

I was at a party earlier today, celebrating the 50th birthday of Cassie’s older sister.

Among Cassie’s cousins are a few that play WoW.

One of them, Jason, plays an Undead Rogue named Grimmjaw.

Jason prefers PvP. He has very little interest in PvE at all, except that he goes on guild runs in Karazhan for Badges. That’s about it.

For those that wish to know Jason’s credentials, he achieved that rank of High Warlord on his server, Gilneas – US, long before they changed the PvP Honor rules to remove decay.

That’s right, Jason is one of those crazy folks that fought their ass off to achieve the rank of High Warlord the hard way, with honor that would decay and position that would change week by week, where there could be only one High Warlord on your server/faction at a time.

I was chatting with him about PvP today, and of course we settled on trading war stories of Alterac Valley back and forth. He told me how depressing it can be for horde when Alliance win 80% of the battles on his Battlegroup.

I joked about how funny it was, that smart Horde would simply turtle half the time in our battlegroup, run into Drek’s room or camp a party in Galv’s chamber, and the Alliance would see a turtle start and quit in disgust and take the deserter debuff, basically handing over a win out of laziness to fight it out. A brazen move that I think takes strong guts, since what the Horde are doing is saying, “You want to win, you’re gonna have to commit to standing your ground and earning it”… and hey, give ‘em credit, it’s not the Horde that quits those fights early to concede victory. And sometimes the Alliance wins, so it’s all good.

I also mentioned how much fun I have found it to be, as a Shadow Priest, that if I push on offense and die on the way to rez up north, to just enter Vandar’s chamber, and when I see a Hordie poke his head in, I Psychic Scream them. Fear sends ‘em all over, pulling the whole room. It’s a lot of fun… and something the Horde are very good at doing to us.

That’s when Jason gave me a bit of advice. Scraps from the table of the High Warlord, so to speak..

“When you’re on your Druid on defense, and the enemy is getting set to go into Vandars’ room, stealth in there and just hang out and wait.”

“When the offense gets set,and they are ready to pull Vandar, let them. Let them get a good head of steam.”

“Then, use Target of Target to identify the main tank on Vandar… pop out of stealth to Cyclone their main tank. And watch as Vandar runs around slaughtering the healers and ranged DPS.”

“Good times.”

Eye of the Storm was FUN last night!

Well, not the ones that the Horde steamrolled us on. We had some very strong Horde teams, and a few wierd ally teams in there. I zoned into one that had 12 Alliance Paladins in the BG. It did not go well. Mostly, I think, because they were there to mess around, not because 12 Paladins were ineffectual.

But there was one EotS which started with the normal attempts at communication, “Team 1 push to Fel Reaver Ruins, Team 2 MT, Team 3 Draenei Ruins, once held leave 3 in defense and others support center”.

It doesn’t matter what the strat is, because many folks just turn the chat off. When that match started, I actually watched as the entire Team 1 headed for the DR. Sooo…. not so much the FRR assault force, eh? Maybe the Fel Reaver frightens them?

Anyway… I did my usual, head off to cap Mage Tower then look to see where the actual assault force was going. Cassie prefers take and hold, and she wins her matches far more often than not, but I like to push the bastards on their ground and take the initiative away.

About 8-10 minutes in, the Horde’s superior communication and coordination are beating us, as we have 800+ to the Horde’s 1500 points out of 2000 to win, and they hold 3 locations to our 1.

And someone gets on chat to, and you can guess which one; Exhort us on to victory? Seize control and lead us to victory? Or maybe… to call us all retard noobs?

I’ll let you decide which is the most likely choice.

Hah, and I responded asking him if, instead of wasting time venting, he’d like to show us his genius and direct the fight. ”Just tell us where to ALL steamroll, and we’ll go there right now. Maybe that’ll work instead of calling us retards and checking out.”

So he said “Fine, go to BET, whatever.”

And I said, “Okay, everyone free head for BET, NOW!”

So, I went to BET… and lo and behold, there were only 2 defenders, and 6 of us whomped ‘em and took it away.. and I said “That worked, so let’s go take FRR, all in, screw defense.”

And we went and did that as a group, and took that away. And we still held DR. So we three capped, and folks were so stunned Alliance side that they started thinking, or at least obeying directions. We got people to actually shuffle around to defend, and then bogged them down in the center.

And we went from being down 800 to 1500 to WINNING that damn BG.

Woot!

Think on that the next time you see your EotS team down by 200 and people start giving up.

If you are in PvP, and you’re losing, before you just check out and give up, remember the immortal words of GySgt Tom Highway from Heartbreak Ridge.

“Don’t give the pricks the satisfaction, sir.”

Oh yeah, and I gots me my Merciless Gladiator’s Gavel. I also have all the mats for my insanely expensive Soulfrost enchant for it… I just don’t know anyone with the enchant.

Once I have the enchant, according to my math, with self buffs, food, weapon oil and flask, I’ll have +1309 Shadow Damage.

Yummy!