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.
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!
DeZo Jan 28th 2008 8:59AM
on Sargeras (us) 2 raid parties approached IF when the eastern kingdom server crashed.
So they took their alts, and the word spread around, leading to 3 full raid groups which went to dance with the nelfs in Darnassus.
Huge lags and great fun time.
Definitely needs to be done again.
(I just wish I could see the rl face of the level 15 nelf who shared a boat ride with us, 20 level 65+ hordies.)
Goldwolf Jan 28th 2008 9:08AM
They really need to give some incentive for killing/defending your race leaders. Give buffs to the victors or some sort of trinket to let other people know who is the best defender of the homeland.
That would get things moving on old Azeroth again ;)
... if the servers could handle it.
Aticus Jan 28th 2008 4:26PM
The only problem with that is there would be constant raids on Major Cities. Seeing as a lot of people who play WoW are casual, I think there would be a dramatic drop in subscriptions.
Imagine if you could only play from 7pm-9pm at night on a hand-full of days during the week and you wanted to use the AH. During that time, on your server, there's a guild who has Stormwind or IF on farm. Of course, 90% of the time, they're going to kill the AH to be butts. Now, your window for using the AH is now small and you will need to either spend time going to other cities or change your playtime. The casual player will get angry and quit (my father plays and is very picky about having other players ruining his playtime. He can't be the only one like this).
It is a great idea but unless they make other NPCs in cities immune to attacks, it just won't work out.
-Aticus, http://www.paladintales.blogspot.com
fath Jan 28th 2008 9:20AM
"why aren't we doing it ourselves anymore?"
Two reasons:
-Lag
-No incentive
Would be nice if the servers could handle having 100 people in the throne room in SW beating the snot out of each other. But when all you can do is run in, get feared into a weapon rack and basically get stuck... then run from GY (east side of map, 10 min walk) to your body, it kinda loses its fun.
Also, If there was at least a daily/weekly kind of quest that you could turn in for, say.. bonus honor, I'm sure people would be more interested in participating.
Mirina Jan 28th 2008 9:22AM
Our instance servers were up last night on Bloodscalp (guildies were in ZA and some other misc. instances, and I was in SM on an alt)...but the Alliance got bored and attempted to kill Sylvannas....and the Horde was bored enough that they just went into the Throne Room to watch the Alliance get kicked around. From what I heard, the lowest the alliance got Sylvannas down to was 86%. The Horde then decided to raid SW. Around that point, I went to bed, lol.
C.A. Jan 28th 2008 9:23AM
Alliance out number Horde nearly 5 to 1 on my server. World pvp is alive and well and I can report that the Crossroads is pretty much in a state of total obliteration. It can be a bit annoying when it's so commonplace that people no longer come defend places they attack, as it makes it a bit hard to turn in a quest when there are no npc's to talk to.