Why wPvP is More Fun Than Battlegrounds

I know this may come across as an unpopular opinion, but let me explain before you disagree.

I am a PvPer that exclusively plays PvP servers on every game i’ve ever played that had it available since I was 9.

What I enjoy most is being the underdog. Fighting against overwhelming odds, and trying to take as many people down with me as I can (which is why i’m always solo/2s). I also enjoy competitive pvp gameplay, but my favorite experiences have always been wPvP.

I understand the frustration: the corpse camping, the unfair battles, pve being essentially inaccessible. This is universally true among almost every mmorpg with a pvp server. You sacrifice PvE for more PvP and PvP is often incredibly toxic.

But there’s a charm to it that you can’t experience anywhere else. You can build grudges with people, creating a potential nemesis or rivals, you get to know people purely through bloody chaos. You start to learn their spec, their gear, their strategies, their counters, you start to learn how to fight them as individuals, not just their class.

You can also create a story with your enemies, and that history will continue to develop and expand as you continue to play. Where you first met, what they did to you, what you did back to them, the wins and the losses. And it makes the combat feel personal. If you make a mistake, they WILL remember it, they will judge you, and they will taunt you.

Even if it’s just against a griefer or a group of griefers who goes out of their way to make your life miserable, you will find them later and you will get revenge, and it is SATISFYING.

Sometimes you will get frustrated by an enemy that always seems to win, but that just drives you to improve, to adapt, to get silly creative, and eventually overcome. It makes you look forward to your next battle, and it gives them meaning.

A lot of that is why people like server identity, and it’s why people don’t want cross server bgs.

You can get this from battlegrounds to an extent, but it becomes less about the individuals in the group, and mostly the group. It also limits the type of conflicts you can have with those people and therefore limits the crazy/funny/frustrating experiences that can happen between players. Not to mention that bgs quickly start to feel like a grind. It’s “i have to do this many bgs in this time frame”, and losing is often more a frustration with your team than your enemies. Whereas wPvP is more dynamic than that because you can’t guarantee any type of honor output, you have to adapt to where people are at and what type of wpvp content you want (solo/2 mans/3 mans/5 mans). It’s still a grind, but it’ll make you curse and laugh the entire time. It engages you in a way that BGs simply dont.

Don’t get me wrong, wPvP can be outright AWFUL, last week I was corpse camped for THREE HOURS (they had detect invis so i couldn’t even invis pot), but it’s also got those incredibly highs, where it’s outright hilarious, ridiculous, and fun.

I’m glad I got to experience wPvP again, i’ve got a ton of new memories, but i’m sad that we only got a month to experience it on this scale.

16 Likes

Sorry man, too much for me to read atm but I have to say that I’ve been playing only in the morning last couple of weeks and wpvp is great! A few people running around just like I remember back in the day.
Encounters are fair and honor really feels earned and not farmed. Rarely I see ganking going on and rarely I participate in any of them. If I happen to kill someone that I enjoyed fighting I step aside of the corpse and spam /calm and if the players gets my intention I let them res and duel me when we are both prepared to make it as fair fight as possible. It’s been great so far

Agree with what you said.

I also enjoy playing lower level BGs because you do see the same faces frequently and can build that personal rivalry that you can’t get in level 60 BGs.

1 Like

How strangely coincidental that you like wPvP and are from the majority faction on Bigglesworth.

44 Likes

Not surprised you are not from Bigglesworth. Alliance rule the world here. Horde may have raw numbers, but Alliance by far outnumbers Horde in ‘pvpers’.

If you played there, you would know.

I prefer BGs because a lot more class tools get incentivized on average, with the wider variety of scenarios that you have to deal with.

3 Likes

Yes, the roaming death squad of 10 people camping my corpse has frustrated me some, but right you are about about the drive! Being outnumbered 10 to 1, I knew that I had to get CREATIVE and SILLY in order to beat them at the next battle (Which I so look forward to). And isn’t it my luck? That next battle that I was looking forward to? It happened right as I rezzed! All 10 of them came out of no where and I tried to fight them off with half HP but huzzah they bested me yet again!

I look forward to my next 10 v 1 encounter, and hopefully this time the creativity and silliness flows through me until I can win!

But seriously, I would love to be in actual PvP fights against somewhat even opponents, but it’s all just larger groups stomping smaller ones, running away from ones bigger than they are. This goes for both factions

8 Likes

Our server is actually relatively balanced as far as pvp rankings are concerned.

Population =/= pvp population. You need to look at how many people are actually ranking. Someone said in our server reddit that it was 3700 : 4500 meaning there is only 20% more horde than alliance. I think they’re trying to see how many people are in the top bracket this week to calculate the current difference.

Pretty healthy numbers all things considered, plus Alliance pound for pound are WAY better than horde. They also have at least double the pvp healers because of pallies (resto shamans don’t seem to exist). Alliance regularly have complete control of zones for large parts of the day and camp our main cities.

Like I said I solo too, so the vast majority of the time i’m outnumbered. I usually suicide bomb 5-10 mans and take someone with me, and then do the same when I rezz. You’ll be on a 2 min timer, but it’s great honor per hour. Got top bracket last week doing it (current rank 7).

Just yesterday I got charged by a group of 5 in UC courtyard, and took a warrior with me before i died. Was fun.

2 Likes

Alliance do not rule the world on Bigglesworth. We are able to fight back and since the server isn’t horrible we can actually reliably expect to win lots of fights in small groups, but overall we still lose.

We have like 2 world bosses total for alliance side and 1 was apparently a sneaky take and the other required 6+ raiding guilds to band together and we still were relatively even numbered in the scar.

Azuregos yesterday afternoon I had more people on my radar on the outside circle of the enormous horde ring than there were alliance in all of azshara.

5 Likes

I stopped reading after the Orc Warlock waxed poetic about being the Underdog.

16 Likes

Try pulling your solo act as a Resto/Holy spec as Horde. Its unbearable trying to even mine nodes when none of the horde group up or help and Alliance only run in pairs or more…

You folks are never, ever! alone.

Give Pumper my regards, well Pumper and his 2 healbots.

At the very least he is from my server which actually does have competition from alliance and I have seen him a few times in EPL and wasn’t in a zerg or anything. Actually the few times I have seen him were when I was in a group of 5+ and we just rolled over him.

He isn’t lying about fighting a lot of difficult/outnumbered fights.

3 Likes

I never said you did. Just that your strength is disproportionate to your numbers. We have fairly healthy back and forth, but if we DID have equal numbers, horde would get rolled.

I can’t tell you how many times i see groups of horde trying to burn a dps while all the healers are freecasting in the back keeping him up. They’re so used to zerging things most of them have zero skill or knowledge of actual group fights.

1 Like

Beautiful post!

Some other guy said that.

To be more on topic I will say that I personally hate world pvp compared to BGs. There is a ton of time spent just trying to find an even fight and the annoying and frustrating parts heavily outweigh the fun for me. I can understand if you actually like fighting 2v5 or 1v3 but as someone who doesn’t I really dislike p2 so far.

I do agree though that this is a unique time and it is definitely fun to get familiar with other players on the server of the opposite faction. It is the first time in ages I have been able to see an enemy player and think of something specific about them like “oh this guy is an easy fight” or “oh its gorrister, i bet brotato is stealthed here too”.

1 Like

They both offer different and engaging experiences. The thrill of attemping to murder each other for dominance of a world boss, breaking a blockade into BRM, the carnage of the STV fishing tournament, the fight over resources, its what makes WPVP fun to me.

Meanwhile in BGs you’ve got known, controlled odds with no outside interference. Just two teams trying to outmanuever each other to get the upper hand. Organized team play is a blast.

Unfortunately, it seems in Classic all wpvp is, is ganking flightpaths and soloers with a 5 man team.

Which probably means all we are going to see in bgs is premades stomping pugs.

2 Likes

Stopped reading here.

8 Likes

It’s amazing how many people like this are so blinded by their own server they can’t even FATHOM that a Horde would not be a part of a zerg, or that alliance could be more than 40% of the server population.

2 Likes

It’s because they are upset and looking to blame anyone, anything but themselves for losing/their own mistakes.

Indicative of a low maturity level.