What really killed World PvP?

[gestapo]

And what will help bring it back (at least some of it)? There's a common misconception that flying mounts killed world pvp (the 'anti-flying' squad on the Wod General Forums love to throw this around), and without devolving this thread into one of those 'debates' I think we can safely say it's highly inaccurate. It wasn't the only thing to kill World PvP, but it did help. As we know there were lot of factors, and some bigger than others:

- Introduction of Battlegrounds (and later Arena). I'm not bashing these because I really enjoy bg/arena, but the sandbox pvp system did cause world pvp to take a massive hit because before that it was the only form of pvp we had. Obviously.

- Enabling players to queue for battlegrounds from anywhere. Previously one would have to actually go to the location to queue. While being able to queue from anywhere was a major convenience it did affect world pvp. Great battles were had when one faction stormed the others' queue portal - especially the AV queues. I think Tarren Mill - Southshore pvp was still somewhat active then as well.

- Enabling players to queue for dungeons from anywhere. Same as above.

- Flying mounts. Yes, it did affect world pvp, but at the same time I want to make the argument that it probably enabled it in some places as well. When the world defense channel lights up - or people call in guildies/friends flying makes it easier/quicker to get there to defend a place/person from the enemy.

- The world becoming bigger. Yes, as expansions are added players are more spread out through content. The world was big, but there were only so many places people would be in during vanilla/bc. Even more so after it peaked and then dropped it's number of subscriptions.


Feel free to contribute if you think there are more, and if Ashran will usher in a new era of pvp.

[Nelrock]

I think incentive too.

World PvP just doesn't offer an equivalent level of reward. If the rewards were better than arena/bg...then more people would engage in it.

[Lucetia]

To answer the title of your thread. Battlegrounds killed World PvP. People can come up with a million reasons what did, most will blame flying, but the truth is battlegrounds did.

World PvP use to be rampant in Vanilla and then Battlegrounds came and then it died from there. Now, I'm not saying Battlegrounds are evil. The reason Battlegrounds killed it is because it offered incentives, it was better for honor (HK's at the time and no chance of DK's) and quicker accumulation rate. World PvP offers none of that. You get anywhere from 1-5 (maybe slightly more?) for killing a person. You get that in a BG as well but you get objective bonuses, win bonuses, loss honor, etc. Those add up more quickly than a few points here and there in the world.

[Sky High]

people not wanting to do it? BG's? actual PVP content?

[Cirayne24]

When I was doing my GM/HW Grind, I couldn't do World PvP because of the stupid dishonorable kill BS. However, when I was done, I remember having fun in small groups attacking places like Darkshire.

At least before the current season, there was 0 incentive for me to attempt to fight PvE heroes on the Timeless Isle. The ilvl difference and PvE stats were insane. But I haven't tried in 550 gear... but I really don't care to right now either.

[mysticx]

This is the only real reason you've listed. Instanced battlegrounds that offer rewards. Case solved.

This sums it up, i have said it before in other threads: people go where the rewards are easiest/most efficient, and BGs > running around picking off lone players.

[thevalcrie]

Endless Guard Spam

[villie]

BGs

Becauses the majority of people who want to pvp, want to do so in a controlled environment with structure and gear progression.

World pvp is always a mindless gang fuck, but hey thats what makes it fun in its own right, skill is often overshadowed by numbers which if you are on the receiving end can swiftly become very un fun and tedious of constant gy runs to get kill immediately after ressing.

Asharan looks like it will work towards bringing some of this back on a mass scale but equal numbers per side in the zone.

And lets be honest, pvp players want competitive environments as, myself included, get far more satisfaction from having to play skillfully than a mindless zerg fest.

That being said its still hella fun to raid a city now and again

[LookingGlass]

What really killed world PvP was the inability for it to be balanced at the time in Vanilla WoW. Not only that, but without structure outdoor battles could include hundreds of players in a single area, wrecking frame rates and crashing servers.

So Blizzard opted to put the rewarding PvP into instances where balance could be maintained and latency could be controlled.

Then The Burning Crusade introduced flying mounts which had some seriously bad effects on world PvP making it even more difficult to balance.


Since TBC there has been a steady desire from players for Blizzard to make something meaningful out of world PvP. After all, World PvP are what PvP servers were made for and Horde vs Alliance battles out in the game world are what Warcraft is about, not these static, endless battles that go on forever.

We're finally at the point where world PvP could make a come back.

- Network reliability has increased by magnitudes in the past 10 years.
- Blizzard has introduced dynamic server systems and phasing, allowing them to balance faction populations within a zone or area.
- Blizzard has finally realized how detrimental flying is to the game as a Warcraft experience.
- And Blizzard has introduced scaling tech, allowing for more balanced competition in certain areas.

I think that by grounding players, we're going to see a lot more rewarding content out in the game world. Blizzard realizes the game has become too instanced and players spend too much time waiting in queues instead of having a great Warcraft experience out in the world with their communities.

[Jayehn]

Also bear in mind that when you're in a BG you are there for one singular purpose: to compete in PvP. Many people out in the world are trying to grind dailies, level/quest, farm mats, complete achievements, etc. Then there are also those like me who joined a PvP server for reasons other than PvP. In my case all my friends signed on to a PvP server so it was either play with them or play alone.

Time spent PvPing in the world equates to time not spent completing those other objectives listed above. Over time the thrill of unexpected combat might wane since there are no extrinsic motivating factors to do so, hence a gradual loss over time of world PvP in most of the playerbase.

[Lord Pebbleton]

I think people simply stopped caring, and flying/new lands were a huge help to avoid doing it altogether.
I have no source to back this up. Only thing I can say is I've been playing since TBC, I switched guild 10^9 times, and just ever found ONE person wanting to do world PvP through advertising in /2. This led to quick insults and "lols".

[robbymottec]

WPVP is all about ganking and griefing ppl killing important NPCs.

Add to Blizzard inability to balance servers factions, anyone here played on 8:2 faction server? i played both sides and theres is no fun 5 players ganking 1.

[Norvak]

Very few servers are balanced. Wpvp will never be fair because of this. Timeless Isle proved that more recently.

Everyone will just roll on the winning side until every pvp server looks like Illidan US.

[Gentlepenguin]

Guards definitely didn't help. They've done a lot in-game to deter world PvP and promote safe areas. In Aion, this was also the case. There was no such thing as a PvE/unflagged server though.

They listened to the complaints of the majority though. They did their best to "Westernize" it by adding debuffs for enemies encroaching on homeland zones and creating safe zones where they would personally remove your character from the area suspend or ban your account.

Frankly, most people don't want to get ganked, they don't want world PvP, especially "forced" upon them regardless of the decision to roll on a PvP server, as witnessed in Aion, a PvP only ruleset game. People harken back to the days of TM/SS, but the majority of those people quickly adopted instanced PvP as their bread and butter, especially since there was more of a sense of competition pre-cross realm. Even on TERA, you'll see people abusing channel switching to escape PvP.

Actual world PvP is propagated by a vocal niche. I think it even carries a bit of a social stigma, if you witness pop culture MMO references seen in anime. It's outright seen as murder in Sword Art Online. In Log Horizon the protagonists encounter a few PKers. They're always seen as crazy, corrupt, evil, brutish. There is some truth to one point, and that is the most enjoyment achieved from world PvP is generally at the expense of someone else's fun. I think it boils down to people wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Though often you hear the response "my friends made me roll here" that alone would not make someone endure a ruleset they did not enjoy.

As for fairness, world PvP is largely grounded in unfairness. People don't gravitate towards dominant sides haphazardly, that is a desired outcome.

Ultimately, you end up being a wolf with no sheep to prey upon and the rest of the wolves get bored and look elsewhere, or fight each other out of boredom.

[RoKPaNda]

Resilience killed World PvP.

World PvP was still a thing after battlegrounds. Battlegrounds took away SOME world PvP because it gave PvPers more options on what to do. There was still world PvP though, I had great world PvP experiences all the way until the end of Vanilla and even a bit into BC. The first two weeks or so of BC was still great for World PvP. It was when people started getting PvP gear with resilience on it however that World PvP went to shit. If you had PvP gear you rofl stomped people who didn't, and if you and the other person had PvP gear, well ... It was very slow.

In Vanilla, as a geared rogue I had a pretty huge advantage, I could literally 1-shot an ungeared mage in world PvP. PvP vs other geared players was still fun. And an ungeared person COULD win. It was unlikely, but it could happen. It was chaotic, you had to think fast and act fast and it was great. I loved world PvP in those days even when I was getting 2-shotted by warriors with Arcanite Reaper it was still fun. Then resilience happened and I was either unstoppable or the other person was also in PvP gear and I could take a nap and the fight still wouldn't be over when I woke up.

For me at least, the reasons that I don't engage in World PvP: There is no incentive to do so and resilience made it extremely boring and tedious.

[giovannileanza]

I believe phasing also contributed to killing world pvp. Remember Sentinel Hill in Westfall? And when you attacked a town in any zone, guards of that lvl would appear, now it's all lvl90 guards. It's just not fun anymore to attack other faction's towns like Cross Roads. Maybe they did that to counter griefing high lvl players but the real victim is world pvp. Plus imbalanced servers, on my server horde is severely outnumbered. Even Orgrimmar is completely deserted.

[Hand Banana]

I would like to add the simplification of the leveling process, namely LFD. About 50% of the world pvp that I did in the old days came from a guildie or friends lowbie getting ganked in STV or wherever and going to help him. Without flying mounts and with a little time it could turn into a 10v10 brawl. No one levels out in the world (or cares to gank) anymore so that never happens.

True "world pvp", like actually attacking bases and such, won't ever come back without rewards for doing so.

[Constraint]

To answer the title of your thread. Battlegrounds killed World PvP. People can come up with a million reasons what did, most will blame flying, but the truth is battlegrounds did.

World PvP use to be rampant in Vanilla and then Battlegrounds came and then it died from there. Now, I'm not saying Battlegrounds are evil. The reason Battlegrounds killed it is because it offered incentives, it was better for honor (HK's at the time and no chance of DK's) and quicker accumulation rate. World PvP offers none of that. You get anywhere from 1-5 (maybe slightly more?) for killing a person. You get that in a BG as well but you get objective bonuses, win bonuses, loss honor, etc. Those add up more quickly than a few points here and there in the world.

You're kinda right, but even on fairly low-pop PvP servers, there was still plenty of world PvP in Vanilla - and I played on quite a few servers, Archimonde, Korgath, Frostmourne, Thaurissan (when it wasn't only Horde), Doomhammer etc. It definitely did decrease after BGs, but that's understandable.

After flying was introduced, there was virtually no world PvP besides the odd ganking, again, in my experience. On the Isle of Quel'danas, there was quite a bit, but that's because everyone was confined to the same area.

I think the real death of world PvP came not as a result of one thing, but as the cumulative effect of many, which can be summed up under one heading:

Convenience.

Less incentive to ever be out in the world, when most of the playerbase can just sit in a city and wait for their queue to pop, don't need to get out into the world for professions, or raid mats, or leveling - it's just not necessary. And even when they ARE out in the world, they just hit a 1.5 sec cast flying mount whenever they see trouble, et voila! They're safe - so, obviously, there's even less incentive for world PvP to occur, because even the most hardcore of gankers get sick of their prey escaping whenever and wherever they feel like it.

I think there'll be considerably more in WoD, but I think the playerbase sees it more as an inconvenience than anything else. As morbid as it sounds, the majority of the time in Vanilla, I WANTED to be ganked! It'd get my blood pumping and I'd either hunt them down or call a few guildies for reinforcements and it'd escalate from there. Now? To be honest, I'm just like.. "Zz.. as soon as I res I'll just fly away, and even if I do engage them in combat, as soon I'm winning, THEY'll just fly away".

See where I'm getting at? Far fewer opportunities for world PvP exist due to convenience, queues, laziness etc, and when they DO occur, they're irrelevant because of flying and apathy anyway.

I really don't see queues going away any time soon, both PvP and PvE ones, so yeah, I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

[Zardi]

Battlegrounds killed world PvP, period. Flying killed ganking, which hardly counts as world PvP

[Callace]

Instances killed every aspect of world interaction. And there is no way to fix that as long as they contain the best rewards.