I’ve been thinking a lot about how good World PvP used to feel in WoW and how much potential it still has. Warcrates were a cool addition, but I really feel like there’s room to expand on that and bring back the kind of chaos, excitement, and stories that made WoW feel like a real living world.
What I loved most about Classic wasn’t just the raids or dungeons—it was the unpredictable stuff that happened in the open world:
The Devilsaur Mafia in Un’Goro. Entire guilds fighting each other just to control spawns.
Thorium nodes in Winterspring or Silithus, where farming turned into full-blown wars.
The old PvP ranking grind, where people clashed out in the world for honor and gear.
Those weren’t just PvP moments—they were MMO moments. They made the world feel dangerous, competitive, and alive. You logged in not knowing if you were going to quest, farm, or get ambushed and dragged into a battle that lasted an hour.
That’s the kind of energy I’d love to see again.
A Few Ideas
Territory Control: Imagine guilds or factions fighting to hold a zone for a week. Owning it could mean special vendors, cheaper crafting, or even cosmetics.
Guild vs. Guild Battles: Let guilds challenge each other for objectives or seasonal bragging rights. Rivalries are part of what keeps MMOs fun.
Faction Events: Timed objectives where both sides race to finish tasks—like supply runs or fortress captures—while disrupting the other side. Even players who don’t usually PvP could help their team here.
Balancing the Numbers Problem
I know one of the big hurdles is population imbalance. A few possible solutions:
Buffs for the smaller side so they can still fight back.
Alternate objectives like sabotage or assassinations that don’t require equal numbers.
Expanding the mercenary system so players can hop over and fight for the underdog.
At the end of the day, World PvP isn’t just for the PvP crowd. It makes the world feel alive for everyone. It builds community, gives guilds a bigger purpose, and creates stories we talk about for years. That’s the kind of thing that makes an MMO feel special.
Would love to see Blizzard keep leaning into this and give us more reasons to fight out in the world.
This will never happen, just due to the fact players don’t just stop at “normal” PvP and insist on griefing others.
If you need an example, look up the Angwe saga. Not saying it isn’t funny to read, but imagine being unable to really do ANYTHING because someone wants to gank you repeatedly while youre trying to level. Because that isn’t PvP, that’s just people being jerks because “Hurr hurr, don’t roll on a PvP realm, hurr durr.”
However assuming you played on a fairly balanced PvP server, you could often get someone to help you out and gank the ganker. At least back in the day on my server there were frequently high levels who would patrol around the world, popping into a zone and asking in zone chat if anyone was having problems with gankers. I know because I was one of them once I got high level.
The problem with PvP servers was never griefing or ganking or anything like that. The problem with them (and ultimately why they were replaced with war mode) was the issue of population balance. I was lucky that all 3 PvP servers I played on were balanced, but many others were not and it lead to a bad experience for a lot of people.
Because yeah, ganking did happen. Griefing did happen. But your faction would fight back and kick them out of the zone. You’d get max level and get your revenge. It created conflict and fun. However these moments were only possible because you and your entire faction were all in it together on a PvP server. With war mode you can just turn it off any time and then, well, what’s the point of having it on then?
OWPvP overall has been falling out of favor in mmos in general. ive played a lot of mmos, mostly for OWPvP, and at its core the design just isnt what most players want anymore. we’re a niche crowd, even in wow itself. most MMO players have memories of getting griefed by max levels and it put them off of pvp or a whole game in general. when i try to get into pvp in this game, i have to tackle with the fact that everyone outgears me significantly, putting up a huge barrier to entry. (newer mmos have less of a gearscore factor, in case u werent aware). we’re tragically a dying crowd, any kickstarted mmos that try to have an OWPvP focus get no playerbase and die, like crowfall. the older mmos that had good OWPvP have shut down, like archeage. the ones that are still alive managed to survive via abandoning their roots and pivoting to more standard mmo gameplay loops, like black desert. we just arent marketable.
Unfortunately your average modern-day MMO player doesn’t consider PvP as valuable in a game as players once did.
Older MMOs all had much more open PvP mechanisms… and once the general populace got ahold of them (“carebears” for those of us old enough to remember) - players no longer appreciate the reality, massive amounts of content generated, or social elements that good, solid world PvP brings to a game.
The childish “But i GoT gAnKeD, iTs NoT fAiR” mentality has forever ruined good world PvP.