To placate my current hype I’ve been dabbling on that realm north of the dale. Since it’s been up for a while and I’m just starting out, it got me thinking about what the future of PVP servers in Classic might look like.
A recent scenario if you will: I’m levelling in the Barrens, having a grand ol’ time, when I reach a point in which I say, “Hey it’s time to move into Stonetalon Mountains now.” So I head west toward the Barrens/Stonetalon border, jumping as I go because who really walks the whole way without jumping a little? Anyway, I get into Stonetalon, pickup a quest, find a juicy spider to kill, then suddenly I’m wiped out and trampled by a level 60 who I’m pretty sure didn’t even need to dismount to end me. I run back to my battered corpse, rez, and within minutes am snuffed out by a different level 60, though this time they did dismount so they could /laugh as I gasped my final breath.
So, with that in mind, what does the distant future of PVP servers look like? Will new players abandon them once they’re filled with 60’s wearing BiS and wandering around low-level contested zones, bored and looking for blood? Will new players on the realm cease to exist, leaving only a dwindling population of 60’s to wander the world in search of the sweet nectar of noob tears? Will those 60’s eventually tire of it and re-roll on PVE, or will they just disappear, crippling the aged population even more until there’s nothing left but a husk of a once glorious server?
Nope, most people who get on pvp servers know what they are getting into and love the rush that at any moment your day could be ruined/you could ruin someones day.
Me personally, getting ganked by a level 60 only feeds the rage inside that turns into the red is dead mindset.
It’s possible but it’s not super common at least on dayhaven for 60s to kill lowbies. It happens for sure but I personally don’t see the point. It happened for years on pvp servers in vanilla so it will be fine.
Only sharding or any outside interference would destroy pvp servers.
You never seen anyone with BiS back then on pvp servers, you saw some people with good gear but no BiS.
Classic had a lot of mechanics that were engineered to prevent 60s from getting away with wandering low level zones like world defense.
If the server isn’t ruined by outside forces it shouldn’t be boring, but then again if a large wave of people start rolling on one side of pvp server to be with streamers it may happen.
PVP servers will be the most active and longest lived of the classic servers. After all when you have Naxx on farm and all of your alts geared , then what ? All that will be left is PVP.
Completely untrue. World defense was hardly ever listened to and you could easily avoid triggering it by staying away from towns. A high level player could wander a zone and gank over and over again, the only thing stopping them would be when other high levels came out in response.
Thus you had Tarren Mill vs Southshore.
For the most part, though, people were busy doing other things. They’d come out in response, the ganker would log onto an alt for a while, everyone would get bored and leave, the ganker would come back and resume the reign of terror. This time everyone is too fed up to return.
What would have been nice is to have some long-term way of banning a ganker from a zone. If they are killed enough they rez further away and have to run back, maybe a bounty gets put on their head, perhaps they get jailed or get cursed temporarily with lower stats. Some way of limiting the amount of time they could spend griefing.
But no, back in the day there were pretty much no controls on gankers.
I played Northdale recently, I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve been ganked by someone who’s level was a skull. It seems most people are just minding their business, trying to get quests done. Most people aren’t traveling to opposite faction zones looking for fights.
I actually did stonetalon too and the only pvp encounter i had was a gnome who was only 5 levels above me, who I managed to kill with some groupmates.
So to answer your questions, I actually don’t know what the future of Classic pvp servers is gonna look like. But I’m gonna be there, and if the opposite faction wants to camp lowbies I will log onto my main and set them straight.
PvP servers are the first to show a lost of population over all in the game. Like a canary in a mine. Aside from those few servers that because of faction imbalance are PvP in name only.
dude, the way world PvP generally worked was the same in WoW for many years, yea it’s expected that you’re gonna get ganked a lot. Lets not count Cata and onward where there were changes that funemntally changed the way world PvP works…it was unchanged for 6 years and PvP servers never died. People who are serious PvPers who enjoy it aren’t gonna be discouraged easily.
PVP servers will be fine however I think people will end up disappointed as they wont be this never ending glory of wpvp. Most of the pvp on a pvp server took place in the form of ganking, which will be ramped for a while however these servers aren’t moving forward meaning eventually more and more will hit 60 and less and less will be low level. This isn’t like back in the day where WoW was a new game and there was a constant flow of new players joining. The flow of new people will be much smaller this time around so low level newbs wont be in the premium meaning people will have to start fighting those of their own level, also with bgs most hardcore pvpers will be doing those.
People like to act like things like campers and just some constant ganking of low level was an all day everyday occurrence and it really wasn’t. Ya there will always be someone who bored and camps for laughs and amusement but that was rare unless you happen to be unlucky but for the most part if someone was riding past you and you were red if they choose to kill you it was eh mine as well and they proceeded to where they going. People act like omg getting to 60 on pvp server was this huge accomplishment the different from other servers when in reality you can level to 60 just as easy as you could on any other servers pvp and pve alike. Ya a few unlucky souls found leveling on pvp servers a headache or took long because they were victims of the ganking or camping but it wasn’t as rampant as some would like you to believe.
I think some people don’t understand that wpvp has always been driven by pve objectives and those people are going to be wondering why tauren mill/SS pvp is dead.
Uh… Tarren Mill Vs. Southshore was a thing because of no battlegrounds. Once battlegrounds arrived, most people didn’t bother with TM vs SS because it was a lag-fest.
WPvP’s heyday was pre-battlegrounds roaming 5v5 PVP. Groups of players roaming around looking for a fight was the best thing ever.
In response to the OP, yes players did camp others. Mostly it was the Horde camping Redridge Mountains, because it was the most concentrated place for lower level characters in a PVP-enabled zone. The Horde didn’t have any specific small area where they were concentrated, so it usually wasn’t Alliance doing it to Horde.
With all of this being said, WPVP won’t truly thrive unless they remove dishonorable kills. The chance of getting a dishonorable kill was enough to stifle tons of possible WPVP back in the day, and if it’s still around, then people won’t risk doing it.
Heck, even PvE servers had awesome PvP prior to battlegrounds and the honor system. I remember being in an Ashenvale PvP raid to attack Astranaar for no good reason other than “FOR THE HORDE!”. But all that is null and void if the dishonorable kill system is still around.
TM/SS was a thing because people were leveling in those zones and horde and alliance happened to have to quest hubs near to each other.
What exactly is stopping that kind of wpvp from happening when there’s no pve objective instigating it? Maybe most people really don’t like just beating each other up for no objective?