If we could just get 1 PvP server

We only need 1 pvp server really

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Yep it would pop up in bright yellow text almost as a server wide notification in your chatbox back when me and my friends played that was our end game, shame they gutted wpvp with warmode. Pretty ironic with the name of the new concept. This is why so many pvpers started to quit or move to classic aside from the arena players that mainly enjoyed instanced base pvp.

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Yea, sure. Why not? There is no harm in getting a PvP server. Let them have what they want even though the server would be unbalanced, but whatever.

:cat: :cat2: :cat: :cat2: :cat:

ftfy​​​​​​

People like him only want world pvp so they can Gank. Its because of Gankers why blizzard changed the open world pvp

Right but those faction imbalances are impossible to predict in the beginning, which is the problem I’m getting at. You can make the wrong faction decision without any information it was wrong until potentially years later. At that point, your choices become paying for a server transfer or abandoning progress on that toon to start somewhere else.

That’s not what I was trying to get it. What I was saying is that players can have interest in PVP so long as they have some chance to outplay the opponent to win. But even a couple level difference is basically insurmountable even for the best players. It’s not a binary situation where the only people that can have a miserable experience are the players who don’t want to PVP at all yet find themselves on that server.

I generally dislike the arguments people make that go “you think you want this but you don’t,” but honestly this is one of the clearest examples I have ever seen. SoD is advertised to have transient progression - Blizzard has made it abundantly clear that your progression will go away at some point in the future. Players who aren’t only subbed today for SoD are expected to have their main progression other places in the WoW ecosystem.

You are presumably expecting people to house long term progression on this server, that players who want the PVP server experience would have their mains stored here. With SoD style restrictions, players would be unable to progress on their main character based solely on the decisions of the other faction. If this were just a temporary thing where a disproportionate number of one faction happened to be offline one day, that would be one thing. But once faction imbalance was achieved, it wasn’t going to come back. Tying one player’s ability to play the game to another player’s decision is a terrible idea.

So just like in the first paragraph, players could have made the wrong decision without any way to determine at the time that it would be the wrong decision, possibly years down the road.


To reiterate my position, I’m not against a PVP server being created. It’s just the level of misleading or outright dishonesty when addressing potential snags that gets me. Most PVP servers back in the day had serious issues borne from an inevitable faction imbalance that formed over the long term. It would make for a far more compelling discussion to address those challenges and why it would be different this time. And while SoD style restrictions might numerically fix the faction imbalances at any given time, it would do so by restricting the ability for players to even play the game on a character that is supposed to be a vessel for long term progress.

Y’all sound like a broken record now because you don’t read what’s already been said multiple times.

Yes, I did say I have no doubt there were people who did enjoy that. Sorry that happened to you that is unfortunate.

Nope, not at all. You want me to believe that for some reason. Enjoy warmode all you want. At times it is fun. It would still be an option. (the server would be, just to keep it clear)

The simple fact that the option is the server. Now tell me where I lost you there?

It said you would be open to be attacked. I suppose people would lack the imagination that people might take that to the extreme,and that isn’t fun I don’t disagree with that. Good thing it can be updated though so there is no confusion. Didn’t think I’d have to write out the entire warning for anyone.

You know nothing about me and are twisting my words to fight some imaginary person from your past on this topic about a conversation about a singular pvp server. I’m not that person. I didn’t camp you. Come back to a reasonable conversation.

I find it a bit crazy that people would be against a pvp server - just don’t roll on it if you don’t want to pvp.

WM is basically a pve server.

I feel sorry for you retail folk that like pvp and are forced onto pve servers, I never knew it was this bad until a few weeks ago when some people started to cry for WM on SoD.

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There are three main reasons why people are against the PVP server. For the record, I’m not against the option, though do wish proponents of it would not frequently sidestep the actual history we saw with PVP servers in WoW.

First, WoW is a social game and picking a long term server is a long term commitment. If your friends are on the PVP server, your choices are either not play with them or roll on that server. A not insignificant number of players rolled on a PVP server to play with friends even though they would have preferred a PvE or RP server if they were picking a server alone.

Second, it’s too simplistic to use a singular term of PVP to describe the experience on a PVP server. There are a lot of people who enjoy PVPing in games where skill rules the day and until you reach pro levels, outplaying your opponent to win is possible. In WoW, a geared max level player will basically one-shot a non-geared max level player, forget anyone who is lower level. There is no ability to outplay the opponent when you and all your quest givers are nothing but cannon fodder.

Third, over the long term, left unattended most servers will wind up with a dominant faction. Once you reach that point, the server basically becomes a PVE server for the majority faction where the players of the other faction may as well be NPCs. And the minority faction basically can’t even play the game because they will be outnumbered everywhere they go.

Here in 2024 players can look back on PVP servers to know what might be coming. But in 2004 when WoW first launched, it was impossible to predict how the servers would evolve or how Blizzard might respond. And the end result is a lot of players feeling like they were victims of a bait and switch. They were sold on this idea of constant danger and outwitting the enemy, but what they got was an inability to even play the game as every meaningful place to do content for their level featured one or more geared player looking for players like them to mercilessly hunt down. Needing to put together a full bodyguard squad just to play the game isn’t everyone’s idea of fun.

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Retail use to be the main game that I looked up to but after Legion I really got disconnected from Blizzard. End of WoD they did prunes and legion broke wpvp/world defense alerts, got rid of pvp vendors and gave us rng boxs. After that BFA came out and baited pvpers back with the cinematic to be welcomed back to a bunch of pve nonsense and the worse of it all Warmode. (Which now PvE players think was a great thing while all wpvp players that are left in the game say HARD PASS. SO it’s obvious bliz made some bad calls.

MoP was my favorite era as a pvp player for how classes felt and the amount of wpvp still happened. I don’t want to play classic cata or mop either been there and done that. Degen amounts of hrs into to those xpacks. I would prefer something new and exciting since is why I been forced recently into SoD which has been fun but a bit slow IN comparison combat wise.

TLDR sucks I have to play classic for the content I enjoy and supported retail since TBC heavily up in till Legion. Now I sub in waves of new xpacks to see what they change, I don’t enjoy PvE I only do the dungeon or raid 1 time before never touching it again it’s just boring to me to hit pre programmed fights.

Sure would be nice if blizzard just talked to the retail community like they do with SoD, It’s apparent not everyone’s happy and should take the game that got them where they’re at today more serious. Pvp is amazing for replayability. I argued this for years. Once a Raid tier is done people quit subbing etc but if pvp is solid people will support it all year around+. I use to play like 180 hrs a week wpvp in my younger days.

Prime example. WSG and AB has been around for how long and people still do it? Imagine if the same was said about a raid tier.

They should reroll on another server or xfer their toons. I don’t think punishing all pvp players because some pve players decided to roll on their server is a good way to keep pvp players.

PvP servers have nothing to do with fair fights. That’s what battle grounds, duels, arenas, etc. are for. PvP servers are about everyone being flagged in all contested areas, all the time. PvP players know they will get ganked and killed, they also know they will gank and kill, and they will enjoy both sides of the coin - or else one should not roll on a pvp server. PvP players are ready to be camped for hours on end, they will simply take a break and come back later, or call friends for help, or sneaky rez and hearth, there are many in-game solutions to even the most toxic of enemies. PvP players seek the ‘dangers’ that a pvp world brings, that is what makes the game fun.

This is an issue I agree. We are lucky that on Era, for example, it is still ultra balanced and there are many world pvp encounters that spontaneously occur all the time. I think it was good for them to control the population on SoD to keep pvp servers balanced.

But the biggest thing is that most of the servers that become inbalanced was probably due to the fact that a good chunk of the players there really wanted to be on a pve server, so they left to the pvp server in which their faction was dominant.

I think if retail opened a limited amount of pvp servers, that would probably not be much an issue, nor would ‘pve players rolling on pvp server with their friends’, or ‘unfair fights’ - since at this point people know what pvp servers are and only pvp players will probably roll there.

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I suspect they did away with PvP servers because no one was on them.

Oh there were some VERY populated pvp servers. However the ratios on those servers were around 99.5% in favor of one faction so it might as well have been a pve server.

To repeat the context of my list here, this is knowledge that the player base can easily obtain in 2024. But historically going back as far as 2004, the knowledge of what PVP servers would become was not readily available. Much of the trepidation seems be around what the end state of the PVP server could be based on the history of PVP servers in the past. And when you’re trying to sell the idea of a PVP server to people who weren’t familiar with that history or have bad memories of that history, sweeping those bad outcomes under the rug does a poor job of making it sound appealing. Again, I’m fine with PVP servers making a return - but it’s not a good argument to act like these things are not a concern when someone else brings them up in opposition to PVP servers returning.

This yet again sidesteps the problem. PVP players can have friends who aren’t going to enjoy always on PVP especially when leveling. The existence of a PVP server forces those players to choose between friends and an enjoyable experience when not wanting to PVP.

I agree PVP players shouldn’t be denied the ability to have PVP servers because of this. I just want to make sure we’re transparent about the impact.

PVP servers are about that, but PvP players don’t all fit into the neat little box you’re painting them into. If you want to define PvP players that would enjoy PvP servers that way I won’t try to stop you, but there are players who do enjoy PvP that simply have times when they would not enjoy ganking, especially long term if a massive faction imbalance forms.

With that said, I do appreciate that you are being honest with what PvP servers entail. I am not responding here to try to convince anyone that they shouldn’t exist, just wanting to make sure the reasons Blizzard did away with them are not ignored out of convenience.

I agree that it’s good for Blizzard to balance the PvP servers. I do not agree that the SoD style means of enforcement would be good in retail. SoD exists in a bubble where Blizzard has made it abundantly clear that progress should be considered temporary. With the exception of anyone who subbed or resubbed exclusively for SoD, Blizzard has all but told players they should keep long term progress on characters elsewhere.

If you get locked out of your SoD character, you’re unlikely to be blocked from making any progress in WoW. On a PvP server on retail, unless it also exists to be temporary (like forced yearly server resets or something), that statement would not hold true. Being locked out of your character because the other faction simply doesn’t have enough people online would be terrible. There might exist a solution that would work for retail, I just don’t think the SoD solution would work in that context.

Could be, I really don’t know how to go about measuring that. You may very well be right.

There would surely be some people, but the plausible deniability is gone now. There were definitely 16 year old high school kids with no real responsibilities that rolled on a PVP server in 2004 with all the time in the world that by 2012 were 24 with a career and possibly a family with much more limited game time they won’t want to spend waiting on a resurrection timer. You won’t have this kind of scenario en masse today since players would be able to draw from past WoW history to picture what the experience will be like.

I agree with you that the knowledge is more available today about the outcome of pvp vs. pve servers. Which is probably why the Era pvp servers are so interesting today - because the players knew what they were getting into, and actively wanted a world in which pvp cannot be disabled.

Well the concerns are passed, nobody will be ‘forced’ or lack ‘information’ when rolling on a new pvp servers, it will mostly attract people that want to be in a pvp world.

The lack of existence of pvp servers, causes pvp players to simply quit the game.

I know it may not be fun, but the game cannot cater to everyone. However, if people are ‘friends’ and they ‘friend’ hates pvp - then perhaps they will roll on a pve server for them. The idea that people are forced on pvp servers still makes zero sense to me. Life cannot always give you everything you want, there are going to be moments in which hard choices need to be made.

Well I think server imbalances are mostly due to servers being full of pve players that
‘want’ to be on a pvp server.

Players that love pvp tend to gravitate to the most balanced pvp servers, because nothing sucks more than running around and only seeing people of your own faction.

Thus if only a few pvp servers are created, I think pvp players will do a pretty good job at self-balancing. However, when there are extra pvp servers, then you will see those populated by players that don’t really love world pvp and went to the one in which their faction is dominant.

I think Era pvp server groups do a pretty good job at showing what would likely happen if retail did very limited pvp servers. We have no forced balance yet there is a healthy amount of both factions around the world constantly. At the moment whitemane pvp cluster is 54% ally and 46% horde. The EU pvp cluster is a bit less balanced at 60-40. But these are 5 year old realm so it is pretty fair to say they will continue to be balanced, and likely become more balanced over time (as horde queues are faster so there is incentive to make horde toons).

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Keep the dream alive for a pvp server

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Keep it alive

If Blizzard made a real PvP server it would become the most popular server in the game.

It would be the easiest, smartest, cost effective move Blizzard could make to generate renewed interest from the players who made this game the greatest MMORPG in world history. It would show players that the new ownership is in tune with what players want and that they are willing to make bold decisions to make WoW great again. There is literally no downside to doing it.

So of course it will never happen.

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We gotta spam that suggestion box in the game lol