Especially as you said, when more than a good chunk of the playerbase doesn’t do PvP. I guess I will never understand why they try so hard to make it relevant.
Most matches consist of hyper aggressive young men screaming obscenities at each other anyway. At least the few times I did PvP, that’s all it was.
Because it was a huge part of the RTS identity thanks to LAN parties, competitions, and Battle.net is my guess. Many games have had a long lifespan thanks to an online (PvP) presence, and a rabid fanbase can extended it further. My guess is they figured PvP was going to be a big deal in a MMO, except it never was a big priority during development. Combine this with Blizzard’s laughably bad decisions with the growing E-sport trends, and you have a boomer dev base trying to recreate the magic that captured them with a fanbase that didn’t have the same priorities as them.
During Classic we had Alterac Valley battles that lasted up to 3 days for the same battle. I remember logging into that battle at least 3 times. PVP WAS the reason we played WOW back in those days, and Alliance and Horde foes got to know each other personally when cross realm battles were not a thing.
I mean, not really. Most back than played for the raids and such and still do today. PvP was and is still a very minor portion of the player base.
I still remember Wrath’s launch fondly when the balance of power on the server shifted and the noteworthy gankers who spent all TBC ganking on elemental plateau and various other locations were suddenly shocked and appalled at the mean ol’ horde keeping ulduar/naxx/etc clean of alliance taint.
IDK. I kinda agree with Drah. From my hazy Vanilla memories, I recall far more talk about PVP, either open world or in BGs, than raiding. Raiding was a thing to be sure, but every new weapon drop someone got came with the obligatory “I can’t wait to use this in AV/AB/WSG/Hillsbrad.”
I remember city raids fondly, where the GMs would occasionally help out
Maybe it varied from realm to realm, and probably connected to population of said realm. Mine was Thunderhorn (think that was the name) and it wasn’t that big, and was primarily focused on raiding. That and PvP ranking in our realm was gate keeped by a mean undead shadow priest, which killed the PvP aspect of the realm.
In general for all realms though if I had to guess, PvP usually was strong at the start but then died off until BC’s announcement which made raiding rather useless. This is a guess, rather think my first comment is more accurate.
Back when it took more than a bored 12 year old to take over a questing town.
I remember getting brought in on a town raid in vanilla as a lowbie. The guild that organized it had basically sat on it for a good few hours. Guards weren’t a threat and Dishonorable kills weren’t in yet, so nothing short of an organized alliance push (that never came) or boredom was gonna knock em off.
My most epic moment was during my level 30ish or so days when this Level 60 would come ganking low levels in Ashenvale, all of us lowbies gathered together to combat the Horde swine. It took a lot of deaths but nothing was sweeter when we finally got him down.
Most of my old days on a PVP server were filled with memories of Ashenvale world pvp. Like this dang nelf druid, following around my trolly hunter. I would drop a flare whenever I’m about to pull a mob, and he just didn’t give a crap. He’d keep jumping on me, I’d wing clip and try to run, he’d shift out, I’d try and scatter shot… In the end, he killed me far more than I ever killed him.
Then I’d rage log, go on to the server where my Alliance nelf priest was… And now a tauren druid’s there, ganking me in Ashenvale!
Damn druid gankers in Ashenvale.
And my guildies would be all “oh, just go somewhere else! Go to STV! Go to Duskwood! Go to Wetlands! Go to…” No! I wanna do my quests in the pretty forest with the good music! Without dang druids going all dang stealthy and ganking my dang butt! Freaking god dang druid jerkfaces!!!
…
What we we talking about again?
I had a similar experience in TBC on the launch server I was on.
Some dude poopsocked to 70 somehow when even the average high end player wasn’t even 40, so he spent the first weeks just camping the hell out of STV.
I was levelling with some buddies from high school and when this guy came rolling in to stop us from doing our Nessingwary quests, we grabbed a few randos and managed to kill him a few times, before he left or gave up. Guess warrior isn’t fun when you’re being chain slowed and CC’d by people half your level!
I just got ganked a ton.
I hate to ruin everyone’s nostalgia, but Battlegrounds didn’t exist when WoW launched. In fact they were widely disliked when they came out because between that, Dishonorable kills, guard spawn changes, and other anti-fun measures like battlegroups implemented are what caused people to declare World PvP as “dead.” And this was all before flying put a nail into world PvP. Battlegrounds were like cheater servers on other games, a containment method.
PvP was always a poorly tacked on afterthought to the main game. There has been attempts in later expansions to try to hype up PvP and push people into it, the sad fact is that between design mismanagement and being late to the scene it never has been center stage.
Even now Blizzard tends to throw poorly thought out ideas like tying titles and transmogs to individual characters instead of getting with the times like the rest of the game has so that they can shove more bodies into a flawed and dying ecosystem instead of actually restructuring things and adding real incentives.
“But Anya, there’s war mode!!” You say. Well, look how it turned out: People level on server or sharded situations to maximize gain and minimize risk. They only play as specific times and days so that they can mob enemy faction players without any risk of turning a fight into a slog. Blizz and people work so hard to recreate this nostalgic vision that either never happened or only happened for a short period of time that few people got to experience.
The other way around. One of the things Blizzard realised by the time that TBC was winding down was that less than one percent of the player base was making into raids because of the requirements set by both guilds and the difficulty of the raid fights.
PVP on the other hand was FAR FAR more common, and more democratic in participation.
About how PVP was such a nonexistent part of the early game experience.
I had 1337 dishonorable kills. I never lost a pvp rank. It may have been punishing when it first came out, I don’t remember, but it eventually became a joke.
I know one GM that lost rank with one DK, and I went from Rank 8 to 7 after a handful in a city raid.
Dishonorable kills “killed” city raids for serious PvPers.
I’m going to repeat this every time you bring up this non issue. He found a crossbow. He did not find bolts. Without bolts the only thing you can do with a crossbow IS bludgeon your opponent with it. He does sensibly chuck it aside as soon as a better weapon comes.
The other thing. You very well know that the quest was put there for humor as a bit of a light touch against the whole maw drama. You do yourself a disservice by barking up this tree.
I main a Horde character. I laughed at it. Your mileage may vary.
With that said, I think Jaina does get shown off as more amazing than Thrall and Baine, both in the intro sequence and even later. When we find Jaina it’s by following the trail of … well they’re not really corpses, but I guess she’s farming stygia … in the Maw. When we find Thrall, he’s wounded, then throws his axe, and can’t seem to use the elements. When we find Baine, he gets stabbed, discarded off a cliff, and is dying. Anduin is in chains being overseen by Sylvanas, but once we free him he gets to have his heroic moment letting us escape.
When we rescue them and bring them to Oribos we end up with Thrall and Baine sitting like two homeless guys on the steps (which brings up the question of where folks sleep in Oribus), but Jaina is up near Bolvar at the command table (or whatever it is).
This type of disagreement comes along with having Horde players quest with Alliance NPCs (and vice versa). It would’ve been pretty dull to just have them all in four cages located right next to each other. But any other way leads to this. I can just imagine people saying “Well Jaina’s cage is more heavily defended, so she’s clearly more powerful since she required that much” or “Well Thrall’s cage is further in the questline so he’s held deeper in the Maw making him more important.”
I still laughed at Thrall trying to beat people with a crossbow. But in case Blizzard is listening, I laughed the first time. Stop making me replay that whole thing on any character I want to bring to Shadowlands.