PVP, Twinking, and Questing

As I’ve mentioned before, Battlegrounds and other forms of PvP are something that I hold near and dear to my heart. It is in these arenas that I can show off my skill, my gear, and stare into the face of an enemy, perhaps greater than myself, and come out triumphant. So, naturally, it would seem like only a small step of logic to see why I chose to play my main on a PvP server. Funny enough, however, you would be gravely mistaken. My joining Crushridge was a choice motiviated by a need to be closer to friends, and when I made the move to Crushridge from my original server, Baelgun-US, I had only just started playing the game and didn’t quite understand what the term “PvP Server” implied.

Now I know. Only now, when it is too late to really change, do I realize the complete error in my choice. Being on a PvP server is not about skill. It’s not really about gear, and it certainly isn’t about overcoming a power greater than yourself in the quest toward a common goal with your team mates. Being on a PvP server is not about camaraderie, or uniting on a fierce battlefield. Being on a PvP server is, case and point, about being overtaken by frustration so severe you want to cry. Being on a PvP server is dreading seeing a member of the opposing faction approach. My friends, being on a PvP server is knowing that the moment you encounter a Horde (or an Alliance member, depending on your faction) you can forget about questing for a few hours.

So how do we define the morality of ganking? We can’t. Ganking, in and of itself, is not moral. It is an act solely for the purpose of interrupting the time and effort of another being as they try to play the game. Now, obviously, this is expected and even encouraged on a PvP server, and a couple of ganks here and there are certainly not something I will begrudge my friends from the other banner. On the other hand, I’ve found that on a PvP server, it is common practice to go out of your own way to make the life of your gankee a living hell. To make it nearly impossible for them to complete the simplest of goals.

Being on a PvP server has nearly depleted the fun of this game for me on several occasions, yet for some unknown, self-flagellating reason, I remain.

So how much is too much? That’s hard to measure. Some people have no problem with being ganked by the same person for nearly an hour. Others log off after being killed once. So where should we draw the line, if we were to hypothetically create rules of etiquette for ganking? I’d say somewhere in the neighborhood of three kills, but that’s just me. Another thing? Blizzard should allow players on PvP servers to turn off their PvP flag after dying a certain number of times.

Taking a step over to Battlegrounds for a moment, I’d like to touch on the topic of twinking. I can remember my first foray into Warsong Gulch, when my beloved Throrn was a mere level 19 hunter. My very first game was up against a twink guild premade, and never have I known slaughter on such a large scale. For months I bemoaned the existence of twinks, often pondering to myself why they are allowed to exist, so unbalancing are they to the BG world. Now that I have a twink, and have participated in some particularly epic premades, I can understand why Blizzard has allowed them to survive. It is because twinks are the dominant players in level 19 bgs. Perhaps not in the later brackets, but in the first Warsong bracket, twinks keep those games alive. If we were to remove twinks entirely from the equation, we would be left with few BGs for the 19 crowd, because we would reduce the number of participants by a clean 70%.

The final thing that I want to to talk about today is questing, and particularly the push to 70. From 60-61, we are in Hellfire Peninsula (or perhaps from 58-61). Players are thrust into this environment where gold and rewards are exponentially increased from their Azerothian counterparts. Yet, here’s the kicker: the quests do not, in any way, become more difficult. As you level from 1-60 in Azeroth, you can notice a steady climb in quest difficulty. Even though mobs may remain the same level as you, though they may consistently scale to your power, Blizzard still found ways to create new challenges. Before BC, the increase in challenge over the course of the 1-60 race was sufficient to prepare players for entry level end-game content. But, with absolutely no noticeable change in difficulty (at least for me, and I’ve so far quested in two zones in Outlands), how can we be certain that players will be prepared for end-game BC content, such as Kara, Mag, or Gruul’s? The simple answer is, they generally aren’t. And until Blizz decides to amp the difficulty up in their patches, rather than catering to the ever-more-annoying class wars, I think that we may see an actual collapse in numbers of players that can and will competently engage in end-game content by the time Wrath appears.

So, there’s my thoughts for the evening. Ponder these things, chew on them, digest them a bit, and when you crap them out and have formed an opinion, drop me a line. I love to hear the thoughts of others (unless they’re disagreeing with me).

Until next time boys and girls, be safe, buckle up, and remember: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.