The playerbase didn't kill world PvP

[Deleted]

So u don't want to get dragged to pvp fights but yet there u are in a PvP server... and u complain?! Really... if u didn't want to be ganked, gank, get dragged into pvp fights all the time, then u should have picked a PvE server, and puff... no more unwanted pvp for u! It's things like what u said, plus the "it's milking time" mentality Blizz adopted, that as been dragging the game to what it is now... half dead, half filled with casual people that think 30m per day should give them all the game has to offer, just cause their Rl mentality should be dragged into games too.
I loved this game so much, it was fun as hell to try and get hard stuff (pve or pvp, won't matter, w/e u like the most or both if u had time and wanted to spend it in the game)... but God forbid the casuals of not getting their hands on everything with their 30m per day average time played! Well Blizz heard u guys... they want your subs aka money, so now the game is all yours. Free stuff for 0.1 effort (u get 0.1 for pressing the queue button) and now u guys can all have the same gear/mounts/pets/titles... cause being all equal is so much fun!

[Destruktion]

There's a problem with world PVP - it's fun for the victors, and not for the ganked. Period.

I've played this game since Open Beta, just before it went live, and I've played since it went live. I remember world PVP. I remember the time some (f'n) horde guild was running MC (that meant there were 40 of them) and I wanted to run BRD. I remember it took me over 30 minutes of corpse dragging (rez away from your body towards your goal, get immediately ganked, run the long distance back, repeat) to get inside the instance.

World PVP can die in a fire. If MOP is as world-PVP centric as the smug dev mouthpieces make it sound, I won't be renewing my sub once the year's worth is over. I should never have started on a PVP realm, wouldn't have but I was following my idiot friends. I'm not about to pay to move all 7+ 85s I care about to a PVE realm either.

Also, I've played PVE - it's worse, in some ways - people flag themselves for PVP then stand near you when you're trying to kill mobs, hoping you'll AOE 'em by mistake so that they can then gank you. Or people flag themselves and run around never ceasing their crowing about how badass they are for being flagged all the time.

Here: I've uploaded a video one of us took (Not me) of the time we sacked Tarren Mill. I didn't create the video or choose the song, which I may need to strip out later. Still, the song works. That rage? In the song? That's what I felt the entire time, at the horde, at the tarren mill guards, etc. We were so tired of being ganked - levelling through South Shore was a frigging joke, most of us skipped it after a while. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcacDbFeaJQ

So to recap, world pvp - glad it's dead, hope it stays dead, afraid it won't stay dead, planning on quitting before MOP ships if it turns out that we're forced into world PVP.

You would rather have others' level of fun ruined than simply make an adjustment to your own? You don't need to move all of your dime-a-dozen alts, just take your main.

[hulkgor]

flying mounts
+
Instance queueing + porting
+
PVP queueing + porting

killed world pvp.

i remember fondly the guild battles we used to have on our way to Blackrock Mountain after meeting up at Kargath before the raid, or the frantic battles over control of the meeting stone at AQ, SSC, wtv.

Now? lol.

[Kenasan]

Why not use the trade channel and realm forums to get people together for world pvp battles on your server? Wouldn't that be more productive than ganking people in TB because "they can't run away" or complaining on the forums about the good ol' days? If you're so passionate about it try putting some effort in. They are not going to remove BG's, LFD, LFR, or flying mounts... Never. Not gonna happen. If you really want world pvp fights go find other people that also want it and then do it. That's how MMO's work.

[Sandwrong]

How about this? Go raid SW or Org during peak server hours. if you're good enough they'll retaliate and raid your capital. World PvP has nothing on starting a WAR.

Shit, just last week on Ursin, Horde took over SW IF and Exo, AND we defended Org from their nerd rage.

Don't go waiting for world PvP. go MAKE some.

[MasterOutlaw]

You know what happened to World PvP? The WORLD GOT BIGGER and everyone spread out, deciding they had better things to do than stand around and poke each other in the chops. The more there is to do, the less likely you'll find everyone crammed into the same areas doing the same things, which is the primary catalyst for PvP combat. Battlegrounds, portals, teleports, flying mounts, and summons, those have little to do with (at least individually) the "death" of something that only existed because at the game's outset everyone was shoehorned into the same little areas all the time. If you wanted to do something current you had to go hang out with everyone else and on a PvP server it meant you were going to wind up fighting someone sooner or later.

It's the same reason why at the release of new world content you experience a lot more action up front (Molten Front being the most recent example) and over time once people run out of reasons to be there the amount of interaction with the opposite faction drops off sharply. We'll repeat the same pattern in MoP when everyone is leveling at once and then as we start to hit max level we'll spread out and pursue different interests. Besides, it's not like guild battles, the most oft cited example of World PvP, were all that common. Could you expect to see one if you went by a raid hub? Sure. But to act like they happened at all times, every time is a bit erroneous and the product of rose-colored nostalgia. They most certainly weren't nearly as common as people seem to make them out, that's for sure.

What this type of topic usually amounts to is people whining that they can't force their "World PvP" (read: ganking) onto an unsuspecting and usually underleveled or undergeared opponent. And then comes the inevitable argument that if you don't want to PvP you shouldn't be on a PvP server. I agree that you shouldn't whine when you're attacked, but being on a PvP server only means I should expect to be attacked when I'm out and about. It doesn't mean I should always welcome it regardless of what I'm doing or the circumstances. Unless you mean to tell me I should enjoy being steamrolled by people I stand absolutely no chance against? Which is what the majority of "World PvP" is: attacking someone who can't reliably fight back. If walking all over people who can't even scratch you makes you feel like Billy Badass, more power to you. Just don't expect me to stand around waiting with my pants down if I see you coming and know I won't be able to defend myself.

[Danur]

Why not use the trade channel and realm forums to get people together for world pvp battles on your server? Wouldn't that be more productive than ganking people in TB because "they can't run away" or complaining on the forums about the good ol' days? If you're so passionate about it try putting some effort in. They are not going to remove BG's, LFD, LFR, or flying mounts... Never. Not gonna happen. If you really want world pvp fights go find other people that also want it and then do it. That's how MMO's work.

Organizing a friendly throwdown on my server isn't exactly putting the war back in Warcraft. In fact something similar did happen on my server. A bunch of allies we had been fighting with swapped over onto horde to talk to us, and got in vent with us. As soon as that happened, the fighting pretty much petered out into not much more than any duels you'd see taking place outside of Org or SW.

World pvp needs contention, and personalities involved to thrive. Anything less than unscripted ganking will be diluted and pointless.

---------- Post added 2012-03-05 at 03:16 AM ----------

How about this? Go raid SW or Org during peak server hours. if you're good enough they'll retaliate and raid your capital. World PvP has nothing on starting a WAR.

Shit, just last week on Ursin, Horde took over SW IF and Exo, AND we defended Org from their nerd rage.

Don't go waiting for world PvP. go MAKE some.

Been there. Done that, sometimes for hours on end. Lately it's been hard to get a group together however, since you really need at LEAST 5-10 people in order to just be able to handle mowing down the guards fast enough, let alone dealing with the players. Even as recently as WoTLK in s8 I was able to go to IF with my holy pally friend and be able to fend off guards in an area where they don't spawn frequently and fight with a dozen or so players as they flagged themselves.

[Kenasan]

Organizing a friendly throwdown on my server isn't exactly putting the war back in Warcraft. In fact something similar did happen on my server. A bunch of allies we had been fighting with swapped over onto horde to talk to us, and got in vent with us. As soon as that happened, the fighting pretty much petered out into not much more than any duels you'd see taking place outside of Org or SW.

World pvp needs contention, and personalities involved to thrive. Anything less than unscripted ganking will be diluted and pointless.

Well sounds like you're SOL then. The majority of people didn't find ganking fun and there's no way in hell they are gonna remove any of those features as they are more popular than world pvp ever was or will be.
Maybe a new game will come out and have what you want.

[Danur]

Well sounds like you're SOL then. The majority of people didn't find ganking fun and there's no way in hell they are gonna remove any of those features as they are more popular than world pvp ever was or will be.
Maybe a new game will come out and have what you want.

I'm looking forward to GW2, but I refuse to get my hopes up. I fully realize the ideal form of an MMO game for someone like me, is something that just won't be profitable in terms of bringing in the multimillion levels of players. If other developers want to mimic WoW's success, they will have to make concessions, and cater to the lowest common denominator. =/

[Profish13]

In the end, players will always take the path of least resistance. So to everyone saying that no one is stopping you from physically going to a dungeon entrance, or making a raid for world PvP, its just not realistic. Its not how people work and trying to blame everything on the playerbase is just faulty logic.

Dont believe me? Look at what happened when 10 mans started giving the same loot as 25 mans. How many 25 man guilds still exist today compared to during Wrath?

If your game doesnt force people to act in a certain way, then they will take the easy road. And to be perfectly clear, theres nothing wrong with taking the easy road. Some people dont want to, and thats fine too. But this idea that its the players who killed world PvP is blatantly false.

You want world PvP back to how it used to be? Completely remove BGs, arena, and then give rewards for participating in world PvP. Until that moment comes, we will never have world PvP like it used to be.

[StaeleAilar]

You can still run to an instance if you want to, the players are just too lazy to do it.

There is no point in doing this. And if you ever mentioned to a pug group or even guild group that you wanted them to walk, chances are they'd flip their shit. If blizzard hadn't put the BS insta port everywhere in the game, world pvp would definitely still be much more prevalent than it is today.

[Hoticehunter]

The reason people engaged in world pvp isn't because they got some reward, or title, or loot, but because if they wanted to do anything in the game, the fight was brought to them!

People did Southshore/Tarren Mill fights because there was litteraly nothing else to do in the game. Remember, Battlegrounds were an addition to the game. Once battlegrounds were there, and once you stopped needing to run to that area of the world just to queue for them, world PvP was effectively dead because there was on demand PvP instead of running to an alliance/horde outpost killing lowbies until they got a level 60 or two to help them out. The only world pvp left at that point was just ganking lowbies or killing people you found while questing.

Blizzard introduced a better alternative and people used it. If you want to call that "controlling every aspect of the game", then I'm going to ask you to take off your tinfoil hat.

[Primaliron]

The problem is that world PVP originally depended on forcing peopel to do things they generally didn't want to do. Most people want to logon and do something they have planned. If it's PVP they feel like then BGs and Arena are waiting for them. the people who truly want a somewhat fair system of world PVP are relatively few. it might work out if there were a map designed around designated conflict zones, and maybe there could be a hotspot of the week sort of like the BG holidays. This won't happen though because it requires too much dev time on something that is still, despite popularity, the secondary facet of WoW. PVP simply does not get the same dev time as PVE and never will. As I said to someone else earlier, you're shopping for bread in the produce isle. I recommend going out there and checking out the real hardcore PVP games.

[Danur]

People did Southshore/Tarren Mill fights because there was litteraly nothing else to do in the game. Remember, Battlegrounds were an addition to the game. Once battlegrounds were there, and once you stopped needing to run to that area of the world just to queue for them, world PvP was effectively dead because there was on demand PvP instead of running to an alliance/horde outpost killing lowbies until they got a level 60 or two to help them out. The only world pvp left at that point was just ganking lowbies or killing people you found while questing.

Blizzard introduced a better alternative and people used it. If you want to call that "controlling every aspect of the game", then I'm going to ask you to take off your tinfoil hat.

I played all through BC with BGs added, and I saw plenty of world pvp. Heck even for a while in WoTLK we had plenty of world PvP, despite the excess of flying mounts. The final nail in the coffin really was the LFD system that finally stopped players from ever having to stick their heads out of the city for any reason.

As for the guy above complaining about being steamrolled by a dozen players, that wouldn't happen when there's a dozen people of your faction out and about too because that enemy ganksquad is disturbing the peace.

[Plutarch78]

In order to have world pvp, you need to have players willing to go along with it. Most players don't. Hence what you see today.

[Primaliron]

I played all through BC with BGs added, and I saw plenty of world pvp. Heck even for a while in WoTLK we had plenty of world PvP, despite the excess of flying mounts. The final nail in the coffin really was the LFD system that finally stopped players from ever having to stick their heads out of the city for any reason.

What you saw, I wager, is a lot of people putting up with world PVP to get other things done. The elemental plateau and WG had the best primal/eternal drop rates and fishing. IQD had the SWP dailies. You had to farm rep and quest to get decent gear just to do heroics.

This means people on PVP servers, whether they felt like PVPing on a given day, had to to do those things. With the ability to que for BGs now from anywhere, and the ability to not go out to do anything but farm mats, people are showing what they really want. Why go running around trying to start a battle when you can que for one while you play the AH?

Don't get me wrong, one of the reasons I played WAR when it came out was for the epic world PVP (and for a while it delivered in spades). Unfortunately to make world PVP work you really need a game where it is a major goal, and the majority of fans are happy with PVP as it is in WoW. You're just in the minority.

[Deleted]

It has been proven again and again and again that people will only do things that reap rewards for them, ie raiding, arenas etc.

There is a big difference in what "fun" actually means when talking about most MMO games, the fun you have in Super Mario Brothers where you are stimulated by the games simply mechanics and the fun you have getting new gear in a MMO and seeing bigger numbers.

If there is no chance to get items that will increase your numbers, then the majority will not do whatever they put in. World PVP has never given anything even novel to players let alone useful items at max level that matter. Its why attempts in BC failed in Nagrand, that place given items comparable to epics, and even updated the item table as content progressed it would have been a big warzone.

People may say "well if people need to be bribed then its not fun" but everything works that way, raiding, arenas and bgs work that way. Bribing MMO players to endure boring raids, frustrating arenas or tiresome heroics is a staple in WoW.

[tlitd]

People did Southshore/Tarren Mill fights because there was litteraly nothing else to do in the game. Remember, Battlegrounds were an addition to the game. Once battlegrounds were there, and once you stopped needing to run to that area of the world just to queue for them, world PvP was effectively dead because there was on demand PvP instead of running to an alliance/horde outpost killing lowbies until they got a level 60 or two to help them out. The only world pvp left at that point was just ganking lowbies or killing people you found while questing.

Blizzard introduced a better alternative and people used it. If you want to call that "controlling every aspect of the game", then I'm going to ask you to take off your tinfoil hat.

No. Dear God, no. Large scale non-instanced PVP never was the sole form of wPVP. Some folks bring on this invalid argument over and over again, and it's frankly getting mind-bogglingly repetitive. Long after the initial BGs went live (June '05), there were still areas such as : STV (and it had quite a few hot spots, Nesingwary's Expedition/Grom'Gol/Booty Bay/Gurubashi Arena/entrance to ZG), the surroundings of Gadgetzan in Tanaris, Jintha'Alor, the lairs of the world dragons, BRM, Silithus' Cenarius Hold and Ahn'Qiraj, EPL's LHC/Tyr's Hand/entrance(s) to Stratholme. Hell, even TBC had areas widely recognized as "hot" : Coilfang Reservoir, Ring of Observance, Halaa, Elemental Plateau, BEM's Ogri'La and The Crystal Spine, IQD.

As some of the previous posters already outlined, it was all about the "choke points". Bring the players out in the world and PVP will happen. No, it doesn't have anything to do with "carrots". The old-school wPVP wasn't driven by fancy rewards. If anything, the driving force was, bluntly put, the human nature.

[Primaliron]

No. Dear God, no. Large scale non-instanced PVP never was the sole form of wPVP. Some folks bring on this invalid argument over and over again, and it's frankly getting mind-bogglingly repetitive. Long after the initial BGs went live (June '05), there were still areas such as : STV (and it had quite a few hot spots, Nesingwary's Expedition/Grom'Gol/Booty Bay/Gurubashi Arena/entrance to ZG), the surroundings of Gadgetzan in Tanaris, Jintha'Alor, the lairs of the world dragons, BRM, Silithus' Cenarius Hold and Ahn'Qiraj, EPL's LHC/Tyr's Hand/entrance(s) to Stratholme. Hell, even TBC had areas widely recognized as "hot" : Coilfang Reservoir, Ring of Observance, Halaa, Elemental Plateau, BEM's Ogri'La and The Crystal Spine, IQD.

very much agreed, BGs didn't have an effect until you could que from the UI, even then it was modest. Maybe when the Battlemasters came out there was a small effect too, but I wasn't playing then. Either way there was still plenty of world PVP.

[/QUOTE]As some of the previous posters already outlined, it was all about the "choke points". Bring the players out in the world and PVP will happen. No, it doesn't have anything to do with "carrots". The old-school wPVP wasn't driven by fancy rewards. If anything, the driving force was, bluntly put, the human nature.[/QUOTE]

I have to disagree here. The carrots weren't direct rewards for the PVP, but there were resources out in the world that people wanted. The Alliance used to have to take over Scarlet Monastery on their 70s to run it on their alts on our server. The problem is this sort of time investment wears on people. A lot of folks are too busy for such things. The game itself has so many things to do now that folks aren't saying "hey let's go kill Thrall" like they used to, even if they do they don't get as many responses. instead they are leveling an alt, or a profession, or farming mats, or farming valor, or farming conquest, etc and so on. Most of it can be done from your home city and takes little time. I think we also have a larger player base that simply doesn't spend as much time actually on the game. And as many other threads have pointed at, people are burned out on faction war. It really is a death by a thousand cuts scenario.

[Dedweight]

All Blizzard did was give options. You can still go to the dungeon portal, you can still use those summoning stones that require two people instead of your lvl 23 guild perk, you can still do everything.

One person can only do so much. Sure you could run your way to the instance and yes you don't have to use the Mass Summon guild perk but guess what? Hardly anyone would make the run practically forcing you to use the summon/lfd anyway.

As for World PvP I'd argue both parties are to blame, Blizzards to blame for not giving any real incentive to do it and the playerbase is to blame for not wanting to do anything that either gets them there instantly or doesn't reward them for the time spent.