Operation Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall have begun!
Breakfast Topic: Old school world PvP
by Dan O'Halloran 
Jan 28th 2008 at 8:00AM
This reminds me of old school world PvP at Southshore/Tarren Mills (on my server). There was no goal or objective other than to overrun the enemy town before they overrun yours. It was pure, unadulterated, unmitigated fun. Blizzard experimented with structured world PvP in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands, and then some more when they launched the Burning Crusade expansion, but they failed to capture the lawless, unpredictable quality of the good old days when we just did it ourselves.
Which brings up the topic at hand: why aren't we doing it ourselves anymore? Because of the lack of Honor, welfare epics or Arena rankings from the proceedings? When's the last time you've spontaneously joined in on a mass world PvP party for fun and not for profit?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Elmo Jan 28th 2008 8:06AM
It is mainly the number and strength of the guards in Outland.
they are 65 elite and with many get close to an NPC and 3 more spawn, add some Alliance players to that and your raid gets wiped mercilessly.
try flying in and you get 1 shotted by flying guards.
Towns in Outland are too well defended
Ryan Jan 28th 2008 8:07AM
Same thing happened on Medivh, with the Horde hitting Stormwind and the Alliance hitting Orgrimmar. Unfortunately, the servers went down in the middle of the raids, so nothing much came of them.
It's interesting what can happen when you're limited to 'world' content.
TonyMotorola Jan 28th 2008 8:10AM
Why PvP for fun and no gear when you can lose 10 matches a week and get showered with welfare epics?
Jasperwind Jan 28th 2008 9:33AM
I must be doing the wrong battlegrounds then, because it took a me a week to get enough honor for my first epic. Several hours a day, completing every daily. I'm Alliance, so we only win about 1 out of 4 or 5 matches.... so that's probably why. Diminishing returns really suck for newcomers with no epics. It's a lose/lose really. We're decked out in greens and blues fighting against Horde in S2 and S3 gear.
Brian Carnell Jan 28th 2008 10:25AM
"I must be doing the wrong battlegrounds then, because it took a me a week to get enough honor for my first epic. "
He's not talking about BGs. He's talking about Arena matches. Though his observation fits the BGs as well.
I'm on my elite mount flying around Nagrand farming ore and killing (or trying to kill) any horde I come across. I earn about 400-500/honor/hour that way. I can easily make that in a 15 minute AV. Since World PVP is not only *not* part of the PVP progression system in a meaningful way, and can in fact limit your progression (since you're getting far lower honor/hour), it is largely ignored even on PVP servers (though only PVP I get into that I don't initiate is toons who want to fight over nodes, which doesn't happen that often).
What they need to do is add some sort of Mark of Honor system for general world PVP like they do, say, at that crappy World PVP objective in Nagrand.
Jasperwind Jan 28th 2008 12:26PM
I thought that you had to be in 10 matches and win at least three to get any arena points. I understood Tony to mean that you only have to play ten even if you lose them all. That's were I got the idea of BG's since you get one mark even if you lose.
"Your team must have fought a minimum of ten matches per week to be rewarded with Arena Points, and a player must have been in at least 30% of all your matches to be eligible for that week's points."
-- http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/arena/index.xml
Jasperwind Jan 28th 2008 12:38PM
Correction to myself. It's pretty obvious I misread this information TWICE! Now I understand, though. However, it is my understanding that if you are losing most of the time, your rating will be lower than 1500 and you can only get S2 gear. Am I right or mistaken on this?
George Jan 28th 2008 1:25PM
Wrong. Most S3 gear doesn't have a rating requirement (primary class weapons and shoulders are the exception).
recrudesce Jan 28th 2008 8:15AM
Org was raided on EU-Bronze Dragonflight as soon as 00:01 01/01/08 happened. The Horde wiped the floor with the raid (about 40-50 people roughly came in through the back entrance and managed to get to Thrall's chamber) so we launched a counter on Stormwind. Funny thing is, there were more Horde online at the time (presumably because it was past the Alliance's bed time) so 75-100 Horde descended on SW Keep.
Needless to say, it was kinda fun :D
John Jan 28th 2008 8:16AM
Any time I'm in IF or SW on my 70 I'll participate in the defense of our cities. But could you guys do some digging and find out why all the instances went down in the first place, and why over half the servers last nite were offline or locked for over an hour. Was it all related to Mojo and the hotfix, or was it something else?
Vyselore Jan 28th 2008 8:17AM
A buddy of mine and myself still hit TM pretty much guranteed a few times a week its still all great fun and it brings out the good side of pvp, its not main town but ehh its still a really great time i wish we could get more people active in it
Elmo Jan 28th 2008 8:17AM
I would like to add to this that I do like W-PvP
but everyone is hanging out in outland nowadays so it would be more logic if the W-PvP was there aswell.
instead you have to raid an old world place and most are so deserted only the capitals remain.
raids on the capitals just result in horrible camping and beeing outnumbered 5-1.
if I want 1 thing they would change in WotLK they had to make the towns less well defended.
we're 70 dammit we can defend ourselves, if we didn't want that we'd not roll on a PvP realm.
I'd really like beeing busy questing and then having to return and defend our town because it is under attack.
(I don't mean a Halaa like thing though)
of course fortresses are fine for PvE realms but they seriously don't know what they're missing.
Rydolomo Jan 28th 2008 8:51AM
It didn't matter if you were on a pvp realm or not since you were enting a city of the opposite faction which flagged you pvp anyway. I'm on a pve carebear server and the plays just the same in capital cities.
BTW, I read that the Dallas datacenter 'had issues' probably a comms problem with the instance servers.
Rydolomo
Juan Jan 28th 2008 8:20AM
I think we did it mostly because it was the ONLY thing to do at the time other than do MC/Ony.
multikast Jan 28th 2008 8:21AM
been a while, but I've been on both sides of the Southshore/Tarren Mill battle. both were fun, but I prefer being on the Horde side.
I think the decline in world pvp is the lack of honor, plain and simple. Personally, I think we should get more honor for pvp kills and more honor for killing guards. the halaa idea could have been implemented much better, had they removed the 'requirement' of bombing the guards and added things to it and made it a real city with a bank, mailbox, FP, etc.
LostOne Jan 28th 2008 8:25AM
I've talked to friends from 5 servers and this seems to have happened on all of them. Battlegrounds and instances go down, the raiders and PVP twinks get bored and raid the old world capital cities. Judging by how many servers were offline last night, I'm guessing at least half the servers had some major city raids going on.
Lexemom Jan 28th 2008 8:36AM
Before the servers crashed, Mannoroth had a huge Halaa battle. On the Horde side, there were over two full raid groups there alone. The lag was so bad that you were unable to turn around, so AOE was the only thing working. After doing that for quite a while, no one was even getting battles tokens anymore.
Of course, that goes along with the rest of the servers. BGs and instances were down-since people were all along, huge impromptu raids were scheduled!
Mic Jan 28th 2008 8:49AM
while i think world pvp is far mor fun that bg or arenas, it would be nice if you could have a full out capitol raid without the server crashing or having lag so bad you cant do anything.
Ryan Jan 28th 2008 9:31AM
*Cough*warhammer*Cough*
Magilacuty Jan 28th 2008 8:55AM
Alli went into UC on Ravencrest last nite. Huge group, they tried to go after Lady S. but were quickly slaughtered by the HORDE!