I came across a post that had been brought up due to the new War Mode in BfA. The question was, do you kill anything that’s an enemy?

The answers in there were varied but could be broken down into a few categories.

1. Yes (17 replies) 13 Horde, 4 Alliance
2. No (26 replies) 11 Horde, 15 Alliance
3. Depends (24 replies) 13 Horde, 11 Alliance
4. Yes but not Lowbies ever (12 replies) 5 Horde, 7 Alliance
5. Depends but not Lowbies ever (4 replies) 3 Horde, 1 Alliance

At the time of writing there were a lot of replies, it had really sparked something in people but I personally don’t like PvP as a rule.

I don’t mind so much if it’s as a team thing out in the wild and I have some awesome memories of running off to help when I was on Dragonmaw and defending Darkshire from the Horde. If its just one when I’m trying to get shit done then I just accept my fate and die quickly, emote clapping at them. But when I have five of them attacking me as I am on my own, trying to finish off a quest and what not, then it really pisses me off. I never shoot first, I never kill Lowbies and if I get attacked then I just let myself die as trying to fight back just wastes time. Yes I know and am very aware that I was on on a PvP server and if I didn’t like it I should have gone to a Normal realm.

However! When I first joined up and paid my subscription, I was asked to pick my first realm and the one I joined was the one that said ‘New Players’ and guess what? That was Dragonmaw and it was a PvP realm. I had no fucking clue what PvP even was. I didn’t know what anything was! All I really understood was I was trying to complete all my quests to level up and I was being killed by things that had more than ten times my health, including players. But as I progressed I worked things out and then made some good friends. So to spend money to change to a different realm away from the people I had spent time getting to know just because I should have gone to a ‘normal’ realm if I didn’t like being ganked wasn’t really an option I was willing to take.

Recently, the need for being able to switch off PvP has grown with the realm merging in supposedly ‘dead’ places (eg: everywhere) and I have found groups of Horde camping out killing any Alliance members who dare try and turn in a quest, complete an action or purchase from a vendor.

The first one that really pissed me off was the Kirin Tor Tavern Crawl where they were killing everyone at the MoP Tavern in the Mists, which happened to be where a lot of us ported in when we clicked on the mage back in Dalaran, thus rendering it so that no Alliance could actually participate.
When considering that the first attempt at this crawl had been pushed back by Blizzard anyway it made it exceptionally frustrating.

The second occasion was recently in Timeless Isle, where they were preventing all Alliance players from being able to get to the vendor to turn in their Timewalking badges. The result was that if you couldn’t get there then,  you now have to wait until October for the next time it is Pandaren Timewalking to be able to get it.

The worst side PvP was when a group of 110 Horde was hanging around the Alliance Rebel camp at the entrance to Stranglethorn Vale, killing everyone who was trying to level. It wasn’t even a fair fight and they were literally griefing. Yet as soon as some Alliance 110’s turned up they all ran for cover or realm hopped away. Infuriatingly it meant that those levelling had to stop what they were doing and log their mains to try and drive them back, wasting their time.

Yes, there is probably going to be people who think that I’m just QQ’ing and I should ‘git gud’ seeing as I was on a PvP realm but it’s not really about that now, is it?
Killing NPC’s so that people cant turn in quests is already a frowned upon act that already makes the ban hammer warm so how different is repeatedly camping the players around the unkillable NPC to prevent them from being able to access it? Both actions prevent players from actually playing the game as Blizzard intended. Does killing lvl 110 Alliance players actually get anything? Yes, it does give them Honor points but if that’s what they were doing it for why not go to where you will find more players to kill rather than picking off the occasional one or two that go over there?

I haven’t always experienced bad things on a PvP realm. I remember when we killed all the Horde leaders and both sides had fun picking each other off. That was fun because we actively wanted to engage in PvP out there in the world, even at the drop of a hat (like with Darkshire). We have danced with lowbies and helped them kill rares and whatnot, I’ve waved back at a Hordie who was fishing near me as we gathered all the crap we needed to get the food together for the next raid. I always pull my pets back once a rare has been downed so they don’t start attacking the Horde player who helped bring down the rare as much as I did.
I think the difference back then was that the realms were singular and you got to know the names over the heads of the characters running around. No matter what side they were on.
You could remember who you needed to kill in revenge for something three weeks ago if needed. I, for example, had the name of a Horde Druid on my list for months. I happened to hear him stealth near me while I was levelling (this is why you play with the sound on!) and proceed to have a go at killing me. I did die during our little encounter but I also managed to make him fall off a cliff so we were kinda even. He was about seven levels above me and I remember always being on the look out for him to see if I could get my revenge.

Now though, all I see is new people who mean nothing to me, from every single realm going. I could run laps of Dalaran and there will be someone new at every corner and those players that I pass I have never seen before and won’t ever see again.
The merging of the four realms in the Dragonmaw group meant that now I don’t remember the names of people from other guilds on my own connected realms, which is a shame as before I could tell you what guild they were in from their name alone…

This hasn’t been lost on some of the forum posters either. PvP is faceless now with all the realm merging and sharding going on. Which makes it all the more confusing when seeing that Blizzards resolution idea for sorting out of impairments to gameplay and griefing to players who play on a PvP realm is to expect the player to just get revenge…. How exactly are we supposed to do that when we are never likely to see them again?

Some were saying that war mode will give world PvP meaning again, but it might be nice to know how it lost its meaning? Because you can still do world PvP without the griefing, you didn’t need to camp NPC’s or lowbies to get your fill. You don’t get satisfaction from PvP when its 15 or 20 of you against 2 because you don’t really have to do anything…
I was levelling with Francis at one point, we both had our new allied factions. I was a Pally and he was a Mage (or some clothie anyway) and we got picked on by two Horde who were around the same level as us. They were both ranged, one being a Hunter. I had to run around like an absolute twat trying to kill them both and protect my squishy accomplice. It was difficult considering I was playing the class that has the movement speed of a tortoise in treacle but it was fun. This had a bit of meaning, we were all evenly matched with gear so it came down to skill. The word ‘Rekt’ couldn’t apply more to them. With Francis screeching in my ear and myself yelling at my screen we eradicated them not once but three times. Every time they kept trying, hiding one of them while they tried to pick off Francis and every time they got my sword up their ass and my shield in their face.

There was also a post recently where someone was levelling with some other randomers around a settlement that had lvl 60 NPC’s. The lvl 110’s were repeatedly killing the NPC’s because they had War Mode on and those levelling didn’t. They couldn’t kill the players so they killed off the NPC’s they needed to turn in quests and such forth. Once those levelling logged onto their mains to try and drive the attackers back, they found that the NPC’s were unprotectable due to their low health pools. They couldn’t get a heal off onto them before they were being one shot. They couldn’t protect them from being killed and they couldn’t level. The griefing was still going on even with War Mode being off.

Half of the issue prior to the launch of War Mode could probably be explained by having Dalaran as a player base for both the Horde and Alliance along with all neutral flightpaths and Class Halls meant that we didn’t need to see ourselves as enemies and potentially that’s why the cock-end behaviour to prevent players from actually playing ended up happening. The raids on each others hubs in MoP created enough world PvP that people didn’t endlessly sit at random vendors or gank lowbies. I remember when whole guilds would hang out there and someone would go over to the Horde shrine and stir some shit, fly back and then we would wait for them to retaliate. We played it like a battleground, all on TeamSpeak and using Trade Chat to coordinate those who were joining in but not in-guild. It was always a case of we poke them with a stick and then regoup and see if they are brave enough to come over to the Alliance shrine, where we positioned players hiding in every nook and cranny to try and catch them out.
Even if the Black Market was occasionally a fighting ground, it was only when there was something there that people actually wanted and it was often over in a few minutes. At worst a push and shove between the factions to try and get bids up there. Mailboxes everywhere are we protected the person trying to gather their money back after being outbid and then pushing out way back in so they could re-bid. It followed a constant cycle of pushing and shoving until the auction was over.
Not this constant camping on the off chance someone will come along so you can prevent them from doing anything, even turning in quests.

Now I am well aware that the Alliance can be complete dicks as well when it comes to being a pain in the arse to lowbies. I’ve seen them on a high pop Horde majority realm picking off the lvl 60’s~ in Hellfire Peninsula for no other reason than they think it would be fun. But I’ve also only seen them hanging around the PvP bit in there, if you were low level and strayed into the PvP tower bit then you were fair game to them. Not ideal but at least it wasn’t the situation where you had to hide waiting for the flight master to respawn and try and leave before they killed them again and you in the process. Lets face it, if youre levelling and in Hellfire Peninsula it’s not because it was the fun place to be, you were there because you had to be and the constant ganking and griefing was happening to just make it as inconvenient and painful as possible for you. Again, how are you supposed to get your ‘revenge’ on a PvP server when you’re 40+ levels lower than someone, let alone get revenge on someone you’re never going to see again.

Looking at the faction that had the majority where they said kill anyone and everyone then it gives me all the more reason to turn off War Mode and keep it off, seeing as the overwhelming majority of those who would happily fuck over others regardless are the opposing faction to me, which means that with the merging of all realms in areas outside your home towns, I am going to come into contact with a lot more of them.

When the race for the top is the driving force behind levelling rather than the lore and visual experience it brings (especially when it comes to getting ready for raiding) you are being pushed towards putting war mode on to get a benefit. Which is all very well and good now that PvP in the world may well be an option rather than the status quo but those who are not willing to have their time wasted by groups hanging around in particular places just to disrupt peoples playing then get a double detriment for their decision.
If you are levelling you are an easy target, and you give honor. Regardless how much lower you are, you gear does sort of scale up or down to try and make it a fair fight but if you are lvl 60 compared to a lvl 110 with all the legendary bells and whistles, its going to be easier to kill you than someone of a comparative level. If you don’t want to risk wasting your time being murdered every five minutes because of this then you will still have to spend more time levelling as you don’t get the 10% XP buff and your quest givers can still be repeatedly killed. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I am probably not going to ever have War Mode on unless what we are doing is very group organised and team based. I can’t be arsed with fucking around and wasting my own time corpse running all over the place when I could be gaining the reduced XP without interruption and I will just have to hope that the NPC’s get buffed to the heavens. If I want to murder some Horde I will do it in Battlegrounds. At times I’ve even had the pleasure of murdering some Alliance players when there wasn’t enough Horde queuing.

I miss the Pandaria days. That’s for sure. The fact we had to do grouped PvP for the cloaks meant that more people got a taste of PvP in a way where it was a relatively even match. Which then rubbed off onto world PvP, both sides looking at it as a team effort, even if it did take a DK running in and killing a few unaware players to stoke the fire

I do however, like the idea that the top PvP’er now will be given the role of Assassin and then appear on the world map for everyone to find you and have a go at. At the moment it just states the most player kills without you dying grants you this, so if you grief and gank, you’re going to end up being a sitting target yourself. Those people really need to think carefully about what they are doing as they could become a meeting point for a lot of the opposing faction. (ahhhh, sweet revenge, there you are….even if you are 90 levels too late)