Posts with tag world-pvp

At last, our look back at five years of WoW personality interviews rolls around to the duo everyone's been asking about: Hexu and Davidian, the British soldier blinded in Iraq and his redoubtable "guide dog" guildmate who steered him through full participation in current raid content. Their story exploded across the internet after we interviewed Davidian here on WoW Insider, and Blizzard recognized the dynamic duo with in-game helms with flavor text alluding to their inspiring bond of friendship.

Hexu and Davidian are both still playing World of Warcraft -- but the duo is together no more. As of the new year, the ever-energetic Hexu has been raiding on a new rogue, Dirtypawz, in Unqualified on Stormrage (EU). "I know!" he replies to my unspoken exclamation of surprise and sadness. "It was just that people were only raid logging, and it got boring -- but it was all amicable and cool. I still speak to people in Die Safe. I just wanted to do more than raid three nights a week." Hexu/Dirtypawz says a "very nice bloke" named Vatic is serving as his current raiding "guide dog" helper. "The people in the guild are all nice people," he adds, "and there [are] always things going on."

We'll visit with Hexu/Dirtypawz next month about how he's settling in and dig into his tips for the many sight-disabled players who've written to us during the past year trying to reach him for advice.

Meanwhile, Davidian reports that the year since we interviewed him has been packed with recognition and encouragement. "The publicity was just unreal," he says. "Even to this day, I get people coming to our server just to say how much the story inspired them and restored their faith in the gaming community. The biggest thing of all, though, was the fact that it made its way to Blizzard, and myself and Ben got signed copies of the collectors edition of Cataclysm signed by at least 50 members of the Blizzard team, and [we] received in-game pets also. Then to top it off, having in-game items with our names on them was just outstanding -- I mean, to be immortal in a game that we love to play is just, well words couldn't possibly describe it."

All good people connecting to play a game that's close to our hearts ... Keep reading for more updates about people who love World of Warcraft, from our interviews during 2012.

Today's Breakfast Topic comes from reader ben.seeberger after our recent interview with world PvP specialist Gug of Horde Strike Force on Maelstrom (US). Ben wants to know the best realms for finding consistent world PvP action.

Says ben.seeberger:

I want to know what the most dangerous PvP realms are. I leveled my original main (I've since switched to a RP realm) on a PvP realm, as well as dozens of alts, and didn't find a challenge there at all (Nerzhul - US). So when people talk about the danger of running a toon on a PvP realm, I have on idea what they are talking about.

First of all, we can probably come up with some general advice and observations about the advantages of RP-PvP realms. When it comes to world PvP, realms packed with roleplayers who want to stretch and fill the outlines of Azeroth's factional war probably see a little more organized action than others. If you play on an RP-PvP realm, would you agree this is true for your realm?

Let's see if we can't come up with some sort of consensus on the most active and dangerous PvP realms in WoW right now. This is an opportunity to help out fellow players with specific realms recommendations and cautions -- it's time to name names! Where's the hot world PvP action? What are the dead PvP realms to avoid?

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Playing on a PvP realm spins World of Warcraft in an entirely different direction. In this Azeroth, there's no such thing as "wait until I'm ready." Every single moment is rife with danger, even when you're merely trying to remain unnoticed long enough to race through a few dailies. Every player is ripe for the picking, whether you're fully healed and bristling with cooldowns or half-buried beneath an accidental overpull. Protest all you like -- if this isn't your cup of tea, you don't belong on a PvP realm.

Danger is palpable. At any given moment, someone's likely to be lurking in the shadows with the specific intent of blocking your progress. If you're an Alliance player on Maelstrom (US), that somebody is likely to be a member of Horde Strike Force.

"One of the first things you need to learn on a PvP realm is to expect the unexpected," explains Horde Strike Force GM Gug. "One of the second things you need to learn is to accept the fact that sometimes you're going to get attacked and killed by somebody or somebodies much more powerful or skilled than you are. The sooner you can absorb and roll with this, the faster you'll progress in level."

"PvP leveling is not for the faint of heart," he continues. "You've got to be tough and able to react positively to negative situations. 'OK, I died but I can rez and go quest somewhere else for awhile' is a good code to live by while leveling. Don't get stuck in a rut; there are a lot of quest options out there. All this being said, the game doesn't get any more fun or alive and breathing than on a PvP realm. Once you go PvP, you never truly go back."

My server is a PvP server. It's one of the more balanced populations with a relatively healthy amount of players on both the Alliance and the Horde. Even before this expansion, you had to watch your back because you could be jumped at anytime by 3 Horde players (at least, that's how many it took to kill me). With the release of Mists of Pandaria, world bosses have made a return.

Back in the old days, there was generally an unspoken etiquette among competing raids looking to take down a world boss.

But this generation? Not a chance!

Now we have these filthy backstabbing Horde (or Alliance) players looking for every advantage they can get to wipe Alliance players and take over their efforts. Back in my day, they had the courtesy to simply let Ysondre, Emeriss or one of those other Emerald dragons wipe the raid for them!

My friends, if the Horde(or Alliance) want to fight dirty, then we can only respond in kind! Today I'm going to let you in on a few battle tactics to both defend yourselves and crush the Orcs and their allies!

Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook.

Today we stand at the precipice of a new era. In less than 24 hours, Mists of Pandaria will usher in what could be called the Fifth Age of WoW. The long wait through 2012 has been hard on guilds, but that time is now over.

If your guild has made it this far, you should be proud of that, but this is not a time to rest. This is a time to ensure that your guild will thrive. In this new era, the best method to recruit players will not change: finding ways to set your guild apart from the dozens of others on your server. Here are four ways to do just that -- but be warned! These are not for the faint of heart.

1. Offer tutorial runs of the new dungeons. Blizzard's new guild mentoring program is a great idea, but just because your guild wasn't selected doesn't mean you can't be a force for good on your server. This strategy requires patient guild members who have run the dungeons in beta or who get a lot of practice in the early weeks of the expansion.

Start an initiative on your server in which, one night a week, you offer to run players through dungeons while teaching them the boss mechanics. Players will very much appreciate the chance to learn the runs in a low-stress and constructive environment rather than the merciless meat-grinder boot camp of the dungeon finder.

Truthfully, I had no business ever rolling on a PvP server. I only went there because some friends went there, and I stayed there out of habit. For years, I moved in the shadows, keeping one eye warily over my shoulder, with all buffs active at all times and the button for my flying mount at the ready. When I left cities, it was only to touch ground for the briefest of moments -- grab the herb, pick the ore, kill the mob, and get the hell out.

Indeed, there's a certain pride in surviving on a PvP server, like a rabbit reveling in its luck of returning to the burrow at the end of a long, perilous day. I've been through multiple expansion launches and patch events and been ganked at exotic locales from Hellfire Peninsula to Quel'danas to the Molten Front to Mount Hyjal.

Over time, you learn to subsist from that extra adrenaline. Even if you loathe world PvP, your body feeds off of it. The heightened sense of perception becomes exhilarating. That first terrifying moment when you realize you are under attack and fight or flight instincts kick in -- there's something in that emotional response that resonates with our most primal underpinnings.

And yet, a month ago, I gave it all up. I transferred from a PvP realm to a PvE one -- and immediately, it felt like an alien landscape.

WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

Last week, Tom Chilton revealed that Mists would have no dedicated world PvP zone like Wintergrasp or Tol Barad. Instead, Blizzard wants to encourage a more natural style of world PvP. It wants players to duke it out in actual questing zones. On PvP realms, it wants players to be free to attack towns and cities without overwhelming NPC intervention.

Since we're reviving WoW Archivist here at WoW Insider after a seven-month hiatus, now seemed like a good time to revisit the earliest days of world PvP.

It's no secret that world PvP has had a rough journey throughout WoW's history. Blizzard did all it could to discourage the wild Southshore vs. Tarren Mill clashes that made Hillsbrad Foothills a laggy, unplayable mess, often crashing the Eastern Kingdoms servers entirely. In patch 1.12, the developers gave us new objectives to fight over in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands, far away from where new players were leveling.

Ultimately, those objectives failed to capture much interest. Players mocked the Silithyst PvP objective as "sandlol." Further experiments in The Burning Crusade were only moderately more successful. In Wrath, Blizzard added the Wintergrasp PvP zone, and that has been the company's primary world PvP model through the last two expansions.

Before all of that, however, when the game was still so young that the vast majority of the playerbase hadn't yet reached level 60, there were raids on the Crossroads, in the heart of the infamous Barrens. And they were glorious.

This video is a roundup of various world PvP events on the roleplay server Defias Brotherhood (EU). While we generally don't do a great deal of PvP videos around here, this was enough of a unique snowflake that I wanted to bring some attention to it.

A common complaint on official forums is that world PvP is dead. (For those who don't know, world PvP is the phenomenon wherein multiple characters flag and fight wherever they happen to be standing. Tol Barad doesn't really count.) I'm a big fan of this video because it proves world PvP is still viable; it can happen, if you're dedicated enough to getting out there and doing it.

Thanks to Croftzi for the tip; I was really happy to see this video.

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Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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So let's talk about ganking and getting ganked -- vile, nasty, evil rogues. How WoW players rage against rogues! You'd think an entire collective of them would be utterly reviled by the player community -- but not this group, which is such a straight-up gang that many of its sap-and-drop victims actually become cross-faction buddies. Vile Thorn of Defias Brotherhood (EU-H), an all-rogue guild that recently packed up shop and moved from another slowly stagnating roleplay, is probably the amicable gank squad you'll ever come across (or that'll come across you -- you know what we mean ...).

With an ironclad one-kill rule and a hankering for cross-faction roleplay, Vile Thorn takes no prisoners when it comes to fostering realm-wide roleplaying and world PvP. Its roster shows no sign of tanks, healers or other DPS classes; this group is utterly dedicated to its dark duties. GM Arli reports a warm welcome from players on Defias Brotherhood, both in character and out, after the guild's weekend sprint in search of a wider roleplaying community. To gank, or not to gank -- why is death at the hands of the Vile Thorns so compelling that one guild of factional enemies even realm-transferred along with its nemesis?

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

I have found that everyone likes to PVP in different ways. Some like to play in the Arena, some in Rated Battlegrounds, some in regular PVP, and some like to do my favorite -- world PVP! I personally have rules for world PVP:

• I only attack when I am within one level of my prey.
• If they are fighting a mob, I wait until they kill the mob.
• I will not attack if they are less than 90% health/mana.
• I refuse to camp someone.

If they attack me, the above rules do not apply. My aim is to not die, as I generally do like to run back. If a level 70 tries to kill me, I have no probably one-shotting them. If I kill someone and they start attacking me as soon as they rez, I have no problem retaliating in kind.

I realize I am not a typical world PVPer. I know I am not unique in the hundreds of thousands of times that I have been ganked. But even in a game, I have a problem taking out my anger on another human being, even if it just their avatar. Do not get me wrong -- I still get angry. But I take it out in dungeons or battlegrounds.

Do you have any rules of engagement when you PVP?

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article topics you'd like to see covered.

Varian Wrynn isn't happy. He sent his best and brightest men to the Molten Front to assist the Guardians of Hyjal in invading the Firelands, but all he received back was a stack of casualty alerts. The cause of death on each report was the same: several deep dagger wounds. As Varian assigned more soldiers to the Molten Front, he simply received more body bags in return. Varian confronted Garrosh about the issue, claiming that the Warchief was breaking their peace accord by using assassins in the Molten Front. Garrosh feigned ignorance and promised Varian that he'd find the perpetrator and have him properly handled. The next day, I received a post from Garrosh himself. It was brief: "Lok'tar, brother!"

I've read several articles that claim that world PVP is dead and has been for a long time. The truth is that world PVP is alive; it has simply transitioned into a seasonal event. With the release of the Molten Front quest hub, Blizzard's developers directed a ton of level 85 players into a zone where they can't use their flying mounts. If that doesn't count as revitalizing world PVP, then I don't know what does. I spend every spare moment I have plunging my daggers into the questers' ribcages. There's a plethora of targets available, with new enemies zoning in every minute. World PVP hasn't been this active since the Isle of Quel'Danas, and that means I have a lot of catching up to do.

From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame.

Brace yourselves for nerdrage in the comments today -- for as they say, "PvP happens." Today, 15 Minutes of Fame covers (gasp!) actual world PvP on a PvP realm. Meet Tenj, master of the skies, leader of the Air Superiority Squadron on Twisting Nether (US-A), and renowned Azerothian aerial combat specialist. Tenj and his group of aerial assassins are in the business of bounties, plucking Horde players right out of the skies in fulfillment of their mercenary assignments. Tenj, an intrepid night elf boomkin, is known not only for his aerial antics but for rustling up world PvP in general -- and for responding to it all, enthusiastic cheering and nerdraging ranting alike, with a "Meep, meep!" more reminiscent of the hapless Roadrunner than a bounty-hunting boomkin.

If you thought dozens of flight-form druids flapping down to silently surround ground-bound newbies was creepy, after reading about Tenj and his crew, you'll definitely never feel safe around druids again.