World PVP on pvp realms

[loftus]

this is more a question than a true discussion thread i guess, but i was hoping some people here may be able to help me make up my mind about something

Basically, i've always played on a pve realm. for the 3 or 4 years ive been playing ive been on a pve realm. I made a char on a pvp realm once, but got ganked over and over before i got to level 15... by max level players, so i didnt find it fun and carried on with my main char on my pve realm.

Over the last few months ive been enjoying bg's and world pvp a lot more. Im getting the hang of it and where as before i would typically die loads more than i would kill, now it tends to be the other way around.

i love it when one army invades the other's cities, but it's a very rare occurence on the two pve servers i have played on, probably less than once a week. Im ally (although im not like ZOMG HORDE SUCKS i just happened to pick ally first so thats what my 2 main chars are) and the other day the horde did a massive invasion, killing the human king and then heading for IF on the tram. We made a raid of 40ish players and charged into the tram, with a brilliant pitched battle of 40vs40 as soon as we entered.

Long story short it was probably the most fun i've had on wow in a long long time.

I was simply wondering if any players who play on pvp realms can answer a few q's?

Do city invasions happen alot more often? is it a daily thing or is it still quite rare for people to invade each others capitals?

Do pvp quests in lower level areas (hellfire/grizzly hills) actually get fought over?

Once you get out of the first few levels and can avoid the gankers, is it generally quite fun and pvp-oriented? do you wear pvp gear at all times unless raiding/dungeoning?

Are there mass-fights outside of raid instances?

do raids happen as often as on pve realms? or do more people solely focus on pvp such as bg's and arenas?

I know so little about pvp servers but the.... 'danger' of them looks really exciting. I just dont want to level to 80 and realise its pretty much the same as pve servers and i shouldnt have wasted my time.

thanks to anyone who can shed some light on pvp servers as a whole. i've seen alot of people say they've gone downhill due to changes.

feel free to discuss any random epic/funny pvp related stories too!

TL : DR - are pvp servers truely pvp or are they simply gank fests?

[Antiseptic]

You will not find much PVP on a pvp server unless you go looking for it, or it is a high enough pop that you can find another faction player trying to farm the same things as you. Its fun at first, they gets old

[Herecius]

Basically what Antiseptic said. If you want PvP, you've got to go look for it.
My favorite way as Horde is gathering up some friends and taking over a roof next to the Ironforge bank. 7 or 8 people can dominate that area because it's so defensible, and it attracts tons and tons of alliance. Bring a warlock to summon all the bored Horde out of Dalaran for extra fun.

PvP happens occasionally while leveling, just from running into others. Raids are also extremely common; if you check WoWprogress, you see that many of the most progressed realms are PvP realms.
Fights occasionally happen outside of raid instances, but they're usually short lived, since you can solve the whole problem of being cockblocked by the opposing faction by just.. you know, running into the instance.

As for city raids, at least on Kil'Jaeden, they happen pretty regularly.

[Deleted]

Mass city invasions don't happen that often. Small group invasions (2-4 ppl, that gank passers by inside a capitol city) happen pretty much everyday. Horde have it easy with SW as they can hide inside the stokades while the alliance can't really hide in RFC in Orgrimmar as it's too far.[/B]

Do pvp quests in lower level areas (hellfire/grizzly hills) actually get fought over? The ones in Grizzly Hills - rarely. The one is Icecrown - NEVER!

Once you get out of the first few levels and can avoid the gankers, is it generally quite fun and pvp-oriented? do you wear pvp gear at all times unless raiding/dungeoning? Well pvp can happen between lowbies and it can be fun depending what class you are playing and what class the enemy is playing. Then, the guy who loses usually brings in his main and then it's time to logout for 10 minutes till he leaves OR get your own main if you can be arsed.

Are there mass-fights outside of raid instances? Yes, can happen. Though often it comes down to a couple of guys wearing pvp gear ( usually dps + healer ) who gank any and all who try to get into ICC until enough ppl get pissed to put on their pvp gear as well and flush them out.

do raids happen as often as on pve realms? or do more people solely focus on pvp such as bg's and arenas? Yes, there is no diference to other realm types.

I know so little about pvp servers but the.... 'danger' of them looks really exciting. I just dont want to level to 80 and realise its pretty much the same as pve servers and i shouldnt have wasted my time.

thanks to anyone who can shed some light on pvp servers as a whole. i've seen alot of people say they've gone downhill due to changes.

feel free to discuss any random epic/funny pvp related stories too!

TL : DR - are pvp servers truely pvp or are they simply gank fests?

No, they aren't gank fests and they aren't really epic pvp fights either. Why ? Because the majority of players don't care about wpvp. They just sit in dalaran looking for raids and do bgs and arenas. Few actually go out there and look for wpvp and then it comes down to ppl ganking eachother until someone calls in his friends and overpower the opposition.



Personally, I would recomend you moving to a pvp realm if only because you will see more wpvp than on a normal realm. After all 0<1, so it's still more.

[Crazhr]

1: Do city invasions happen alot more often? is it a daily thing or is it still quite rare for people to invade each others capitals?

2: Do pvp quests in lower level areas (hellfire/grizzly hills) actually get fought over?

3: Once you get out of the first few levels and can avoid the gankers, is it generally quite fun and pvp-oriented? do you wear pvp gear at all times unless raiding/dungeoning?

4: Are there mass-fights outside of raid instances?

5: do raids happen as often as on pve realms? or do more people solely focus on pvp such as bg's and arenas?

First of this come from a player who have been playing on EU AQ and EU Kazzak on diffrent periods of time but at around 4-5 years in total. Like eveything from bgs, to ah prices, what is considered polite and what is not things are ALOT diffrent from server to server. That means when I say yes or no its from my own experience on 2 servers out of I dont know how many hundreds and things might be diffrent in other regions or simply on other servers. With that said lets begin

1: On every single server i have ever played on that be pve or pvp or even a short time on an rp, city invasions are rare, they are generally very easy but have a high fail rate due to most players in wow playing on toasters that cant handle being in an enemy city. They were happening dayli on right after the large portion of the server had hit 80 ad wanted their war mount achivement but now they are quite rare and not very often succesfull.

2. Well yes and no you might be lucky and run into somebody that wants to fight it but with the random dungeon you are on most servers very likely to never meat another player on your way through outland. Generally if you do find other players and you do not get raped instantly alot of people will relog their main and rape you :S

3. The thing is the chance of encountering another player before Northrend is quite small on most servers since 95% of the server is either in instances or in Dalaran and the remaning 5% is all over the world. Its pretty normal to use pvp gear if you are using daily quest but alot of just use pve gear. "World pvp" is on most servers a full pvp geared player running around trying to gank people and the idea of huge epic battels like the old TM vs SS has pretty much been gone since bgs and with the new improved bg system the number of players running around ganking because they are waiting for que is almost gone.

4. Depends on the server on some servers its considered pretty bm to fight outside raid instances on other the good old: "If its red its dead" hold true. All in all most of the time the battle is one side killing 3-4 players and then all running in to avoid being ganked AND to get content done.

5. Alot of people play on pvp servers but does not take part of any kind of pvp just like alot of players play on pve servers but does not play any kind of pve. If you look at the ranking of servers in progression then you can see that there are alot of pvp servers that have guilds killing hm LK and there are some that has not. It depends on the server and the size alot more then it depends on its pvp/pve tack.


All in all the diffrence between a pve and a pvp sever is quite small at best and the only times you are going to see the diffrence is like you wrote your self when a max level runs around STV ganking. Its quite fun to be able to gank when you are questing but its also pretty annoying if you need to farm something. Another point I want to make is I think the reason city raids are fun is because they do not happen that often, if they were every day then you would quickly get boring just like doing a bg for the 100th time is alot less fun then the first few times.

tl;dr the diffrence is small at best.

[Maleficious]

No those things are dead from patch 2.0.

[loftus]

thanks for all the replies everyone.

read through them all and they are pretty unanimous (miracle if i spelt that right lol) i guess i can just hope that in cata as more emphasis will be placed on capitals there will also be more reason to invade capitals (pvp weeklies, perhaps?)

Looks like i'll be staying on my pve server then, thank you all for making sure i didnt waste my time levelling a new char on a different realm for no reason.

The thing with me is that i find regular 1vs1 combat like duels etc. quite boring, i just enjoy the 'epic' feel of 10vs10 + so i was dreaming that would happen often on pvp realms lol.

I may give it a try when i have some spare time, but with cata fast approaching i guess it would probably be more beneficial to simply wait and see what changes

Also, Crazhr one of my realms (my old realm) was eonar EU... i remember nearly all of kazzak to be awesome in bg's. Literally 4 out of every 5 bg's would have players from kazzak filling the top of the leaderboard lol.

I feared you guys when i was still learning the basics!

thanks again everyone

[Deleted]

They surely seem like pure gank fests.

[Deleted]

//do you wear pvp gear at all times unless raiding/dungeoning?

yes, unless you want to be two-shot + pvp trinket

//Are there mass-fights outside of raid instances?

before the instance searching module appeared yes,

places like karazhan, ssc, the eye, BT were like 40vs40 BGs all the time (1h before raid-time), usually a faction controlled the access to the teleport stone, till the other faction raids came to get it back, etc

other fun places were event-related, the scarlet monastery while halloween (for the event boss), slave's pen for the ahune event, etc

fun time on pvp server are at the release of an extension, don't expect to do your quest the first day, especially on place were quests are shared to both factions, instances entrance were camped, it was impossible to enter them alive, even full tiered tanks all cd launched imploded (well you have to be a paladdin to actually succeed your entrance run)

[tamlus]

PVP on pvp servers happens on my server SW is ALWAYS being attacked by small groups of horde. Although its rare to be ganked to dust up to level 15, ive never had that issue being on a pvp server for almost 5 years. I look at pve servers and dont understand how you can NOT be fighint the opposing faction at all times, world of WARcraft thats the way i see it. Also nothing is more fun then sitting on Ogrims Hammer in I.C and kill horde as they fly in to turn in quests.

[Nielah]

Agreeing with something already said:

You pretty much have to go looking for it, which isn't much different from PvE servers.

If that even gets you anything other than 1-2 kills and then the person flies off. :#

[frownface2000]

Theyre just Gank Fests.

Your PvE server's World PvP sounds a lot more enjoyable than my PvP server's World PvP.

Plus the fact that you can say "Im not feeling PvP today" and unflag yourself is something I really miss.
(I used to play on a PvE server but rerolled to play with a bunch of my friends. now that I have 3 geared 80s im having a hard time switching servers & leaving all that time behind)

[Shokzman]

People on PVP realms these days are Lazy. you might get the big of occasional pvp before the loser then decides to rez and flying mount up quickly.

[Rageissues]

Two-manning SW auctioneers and the foolish allies that try to stop us is all the world pvp I do nowadays.

[roboscorcher]

Honestly, I couldn't imagine playing on a PvE server, because world PvP is what makes open-world content interesting. Since NPC's can rarely kill us, the only thing that keeps me awake is the thought of a stealthed rogue hanging around.

[Entalpia]

Well lets be honest, now when Cata comes out there will be a lot more PvP o PvP servers in the lvling part, especial if new server will show up, really, look on youtube Stonetalon Mountines or Swamp of Sorrows, actually both sides do quests at the same places that are npc battlefields, for me there will be some PvP and it wont be nice when 85 lvl will want to do 500 quest achivement in Kalimdor...;p

[Hyolith]

I agree with everyone else. I started playing WoW on a PvP server and I was kind of scared because I'm not a huge fan of PvP but it really wasn't that bad. On my server we ususally get a few allies in Org trying to gank and kill some people, usually rogues and druids.

Crossroads gets hit all the time, so does Tarren Mill obviously. So those are typically good spots for world pvp. There isn't too much competition over raid instances anymore, with people only running naxx for the weekly, or some of the other ones. ICC sometimes but you can usually fly most of the way inside to get to the portal quickly.

When you are in the 70's there is a lot more world pvp with 80's farming and such which can get annoying but thats about it.

[Dunks]

The dungeon finder along with 2 expansions has really slowed down the pvp that happens on pvp servers. Players are to spread out now to find them regularly. Even while doing Icecrown daliy quests I rarely run into any pvp (like 1 out of 100 quests). sadly, world pvp is dead on most servers.

[Baracuda]

Go to Silvermoon(EU), about 95%+ ally population(27k allies). I think it's a pve server but they'll probably turn pvp on when they're 500 and see you alone