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Those of us that got to partake… such memories. It was amazing. And you are correct Troolys, those in their main areas were not flagged. In any contested area everyone is flagged.
This is bull ish.
I have rivalries (well, people I just kill on sight and they yell for help because they can’t ever beat me alone) from multiple servers.
“”“you can’t have habitual victims with shard warmode”“” is fundamentally untrue.
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After I did 13 weeks of Tol Barad in Grobbulus this year, I learned the inconvenient truth that War Mode WAS INDEED better, but what that actually did was that it broke the status quo of each and every PvP server. War Mode put BOTH FACTIONS on an even keel, and guess what? The ALLIANCE LOST IN ONE MAJOR PATCH CYCLE. I won’t be sassed about excuses regarding sharding either, because it was the Alliance that gamed it to their advantage better than Horde via Ruin Gaming and Cryptids League.
So all my dreams and hopes of being pooled in together with the PvP enthusiasts of the Alliance–because I was going to employ the new dark iron dwarf–was crushed when AOO and 30% WM bonus lasted practically FOREVER. I already got City Attacker solo with my old goblin hunter by that point, so I felt confident enough to return to my first faction.
War Mode pulled the veil away and showed us the ugly, warty truth, that North American Normal-server Alliance SUCKED.
Edit: I heard that a lot: “Bring back PvP servers”. Why? Because they LOVED THE COMPLACENCY. THEY LOVED THE COMFORT. They loved that it was always the SAME EXACT PEOPLE you saw every day you did WPvP. Xrealm sharding and WM were the BEST things that has ever happened for WPvP, but nobody cried harder about it than, you guessed it, THE ALLIANCE.
Even that Blizzard gave us Chromie Time, which was the vouchsafing they did for those who were told, REPEATEDLY, “Turn WM off.” It still makes me sick and ticks me off when I think of how WPvP went into the crapper after BFA.
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BFA was an oddity. The assaults were actually good, and that bridge in nazjatar… we fought SOOOOO much there. After bfa they like forgot about war mode in general and it flopped. The one good thing about sharding is seeing different players, not the same pool. We did have a sense of community prior to MoP, but it did get stale.
I think if they did bring back pvp servers WITH sharding, and new things in the open world, it would be a lot of fun.
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It was all the negative reception. Even after Blizzard gave Alliance everything they wanted, they still complained about how the Horde was just better.
You’d be surprised how much I brought this up in Grobbulus’ chat channels. Grobb Horde just never had the manpower to go up against B I G P P V P. We definitely could have used Faerlina reinforcements.
That’s why that in the manner of C&C Red Alert, I went back in time to get that real WPvP experience all over again, but I see that as for my first time playing in a PvP server, it’s really lousy. Even the city raids are lousy because there’s always that one person that tattletales to the other side that a raid is coming. Irønwølf Clan, bless their hearts, fail each and every single time. Each weekend, it’s rinse and repeat, but it’s better that at least Grobb, a RP-PvP, actually does WPvP.
By the way, that’s my summer: getting my butt handed to me in Tol Barad practically every day. I think I needed it to get shook up a good bit, to get psyched better for something that Retail just can’t do for me anymore.
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The thing about sharding is that it isn’t really compatible with “servers”. It’s not your server. It creates an illusion that your server is populated (but not over populated). It is meant to manipulate your psychology by putting random people on your screen.
Variety is the spice of WPvP life?
This is strait facts 100%… Ive always thought that the implimentation of the que system was a horrible idea and took so much out of the game. I’d agree that it heavily affected world pvp, as people need only sit in their major city and wait to be teleported to the dungeon of their desire
Theres a huge difference between hey that its that guy and I remember this guy from 6 expansions ago killing everyone ive ever known and have flashbacks
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This is true, though you say it like it’s a bad thing. The majority of MMO gamers (according to Dr. Bartle) are “socializers” who play games to be a part of a community and do social things interacting with other people. In the early days of mud and MMO gaming that often meant RP. WoW made their two faction system and showed those players and the “killer/griefer players,” that pvp is RP. And it was a match made in heaven. So yeah… a vast majority of MMORPG players on RPPvP servers liked the comfort of knowing the people on your server. They liked being known by their friends and enemies. The liked calling out on Hillsbrad zone defense channel that {Removed} is back attacking quest NPCs in Tarren Mill and they like getting an OMW response from someone they know.
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That’s fair, but I never subscribed to that. Coming from the AVGN old-school of console gaming, you don’t get on Vidya to socialize. This very philosophy carried me through my own WoW career.
Socializing was done at school and at parties. Again, this is going “way back” lol.
This still happens even in War Mode though. There’s still players that I’ve fought in WoD and Legion that I see today in War Mode and Im like “it’s that mf’er!”
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Yeah but sharding means they can escape
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Sharding isnt what causes them to escape… It’s follower dungeons.
Also we had sharding/phasing even with PvP servers. Cross realm zone was added in MoP my guy.
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Dynamic flying means they can escape.
Happened on the first day I played TWW. Someone I know on my server ran from me to a phase line on purpose and kept going in and out to heal. Me and a friend got him eventually but those phase lines are really annoying sometimes.
There are players I know from the past during MoP and WoD and im like… yeh… they were dang good.
No one remembers anyone today now because of all the sharding hell. Then again no one is in the open world aside from the token quest at the start of the week.
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I endorse the OP. All great ideas for WPvP. WM really did kill it. Dynamic flying isn’t as much of an issue because you can chase people and knock them out of the sky. I’ve had some good dog fights this exp. I really wish Blizz would consider these ideas.
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Considering Dr. Bartle designed the first virtual world with MUD in like… 1979 or something, it’s probably not that far back.
And I get the impression that you are not the player archetype Dr Bartle is describing when he says “most” players of virtual worlds fall into the “socializer” archetype.
I’ve cited “Taxonomy of Players” multiple times through the years on this forums, but to briefly touch on it, there are four main archetypes represented by card suits, which also fall into two macro categories (actors and interacters). The archetypes are as follows: Explorers (spades) and collectors/Achievers (diamonds) which are categorized by their desire to act upon the game world or system, and Socializers/Rpers (hearts) and Killers/Griefers (clubs) which are categorized by their preference to interact with other players.
Even in “Taxonomy of Players”, Dr Bartle didn’t have an answer for how to deal with Griefers, while he danced around the solution eventually landed upon by blizzard. For decades, virtual world type games considered the Killers to be a problem to be mitigated despite Dr Bartle’s philosophy that all player types must be engaged and that doing so benefitted all other player archetypes indirectly by increasing the amount of other players in your virtual world, if for no other reason than to provide actualization and recognition for each player in their preferred activity through the lense of other players. The two faction system turned Killers into RPers and created a symbiosis with what was originally thought to be a totally incompatible co-player (the socializer).
I don’t know you personally, but you sound like either a killer or an explorer (explorers often dabble in a little of killer or achiever as a secondary sub classification). The primary desire of Killers is to interact with other players by killing or griefing them. It doesn’t matter how, or even if it is a challenge. Just as long as they get to cause some grief. It can be as innocent as the mischievous prankster, or they can be a complete sadist but the preferred activity is the same. An explorer that engages in PvP usually does so because they enjoy figuring out mastery of the game system and pvp provides a unique challenge to overcome and demonstrate that mastery. He/she is interacting with other players as a side effect of acting upon the system, in the same way that the killer is roleplaying as a member of the horde or alliance by griefing enemy players.
That said, historically in MUDs/MMOs, the majority of players are hearts/socializers. If the majority of your MMOs players are not socializers, it’s because you have not provided enough activities to engage socializers and you’ve provided an imbalanced amount of activities to engage players of other classifications.
In the case of WoW, I think you may be correct that the amount of players who are there are not there to socialize, but I don’t think it’s because players of MMOs are less social than Dr. Bartle proposed. I think it’s because WoW is increasingly less of an MMO. It increasingly fails to satisfy socializers so they leave. We see this in decreasing sub numbers. To WoWs credit, it manages to make a game so good that it continues to compete with other, non-mmo games that would otherwise be more attractive to the players of other archetypes so it can survive without the socializers and it doesn’t matter so much that it fails to attract them. But when an MMO comes along that does everything that classic wow did, with modern features, improved graphics, sophisticated systems, and a social community… WoW will be forced to evolve or die.
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We have heard this like every year since 05. Blizz is killing off the as you put it “killer” part of the player base and caters to the pve crowd. The ultimate reason we play wow is to have fun. Period. Those of us that like wpvp and want more, dont want pve to go away, but we always get these pve players saying kill it off or gets offended when people suggest new pvp or wpvp stuff.
Let people choose what they want to do, a couple pvp servers, and or areas that are wpvp motivated makes things fun. There is a lot of good comments in this thread to make things better, but blizz chooses not to. Players are not always right on changes, but since BFA… bad decision after bad decision. Hopefully they will start to listen to the players, or it might finally start to die off as everyone has said for 20 years.
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