World PvP, WG, flying mounts

TLDR:
PvP isn’t quite dead, it’s just gone into hiding in BGs and arenas. I miss the open-world conflict.

1.
You queue up for a BG.
You zone in.
You know immediately what the terrain will look like.
You leave for another BG or you stay.
You find one you like and you get moving to the action.
You know exactly what the other side is going to be trying to do, and you know exactly what your side is trying to do – it’s OBJECTIVE BASED.
There’s a goal.
There’s structure.
Your play is channeled and lead, hand-held-firmly, towards the rewards by Big Brother Blizzard.
There’s little variation.
The other team might try THIS, your side might try THAT.
In the end you end up arguing about win-loss percentages and how specific terrain feature X is causing your side to lose (or rarely, win).

2.
You get a friend or two or four and jump into arenas.
You zone in.
You know immediately what the terrain will look like.
You know exactly what the other side is going to be trying to do, and you know exactly what your side is trying to do – it’s OBJECTIVE BASED.
There’s a goal.
There’s structure.
It’s immediate action, quick and dirty.
Gear and some skill is what matters.
A little coordination and voice communication helps.
Gotta have the right mods.
Gotta have the right spec.
You learn a bunch, and eventually end up going 50-50% at some rating.
You keep seeing the same arena maps week after week after week.
The same strategies.
The same classes dominate, though it changes with seasons and patches.

3.
You mess around somewhere in the rest of WoW.
You’re leveling an alt, or your main, or getting some stuff somewhere.
Picking flowers, getting some loot from a mining vein or whatever.
You get into a scrap with someone.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE TERRAIN WILL BE TIL YOU’RE ALREADY FIGHTING.
You have no idea what your opponent’s spec is.
You have no clue if he’s got friends close by or not, until they’re suddenly upon you.
One or both of you gets away and hops on a flying mount and disappears.
Or you finish the fight and there’s a winner.
Sometimes you get smoked in seconds.
Sometimes you win, repeatedly.
Sometimes you have one of those gut-wrenching fights that you’ll remember for years.

My point: All three of the above involve Player vs. Player conflict. It’s just that the first two kinda took the WAR out of the World of WARcraft for me. I miss the sense of a world in conflict. I miss the sense of

“Hey, don’t go there – that’s Horde Territory.”

I miss the sense of adventure.
I miss seeing the other pvpers on my server in BGs and open-world pvp every day if I choose to engage in PVP. You’d see your nemesis and square off, then get into it on the realm forums.
You’d have vendettas.
You’d have a huge and very socially important reputation on your server.
When was the last time someone had a BG-reputation in a battlegroup?
Ok, once you get up really high in arenas you’ll have that reputation.
Other than that, you can reasonably expect not to be interacting in PVP with the people you see around Dalaran every day, except once in a while in Wintergrasp.

Wintergrasp just got another ‘fix’ in it – there’s a limit to how many people and what level you are, the outnumbered side gets buffs and if you’re continually unable to defend or attack you’re getting even bigger hidden buffs. They’ve got that part right.

AND THERE’S NO REASON WHY IT COULDN’T APPLY TO ALMOST EVERY ZONE.

Every zone should be capturable – or damn near every one of them, newbie zones and up to level 30ish maybe excepted. Imagine being able to only capture zones that are next to the ones’ already captured by your side. The ebb and tide of world pvp would never cease. Buffs and timed hidden buffs for the disadvantaged side to keep it reasonably halfway fair even on heavily lopsided servers like Cho’gall or even my own Ravenholdt (usually 2:1 Horde favour). Imagine having to be a certain level or below to be able to engage in pvp in certain zones. Twinks are suddenly useful in world pvp, but not too powerful or rewarding or there’ll just be mass griefing by the twinkers. Level 15 world pvp raid quests, that can’t be interfered with by anyone above level 15.

FLYING MOUNTS

There has to be some sort of limit to just flying around and being invulnerable wherever you are. ‘Fatigue’ if you’re just hovering and doing nothing. Enemy players being able to chase you down and make you land eventually. Flying NPCs that patrol the skies over zones your faction controls. If there’s no danger or consequence to just flying along or going /afk in the air, then there’s no world pvp and no sense of danger on a PVP server. You might as well just call them all PVE servers by then. I guess the main towns and cities will have guards in the air but that’s just not enough.

Do we really want a PVP server environment in WoW where you just fly up, fly to where you need to go, do your thing and fly back – with no danger or possible interaction with opposing-faction players on the way there and back? I don’t. I rolled on a PVP server to have a sense of danger and excitement just from running around in the world. I hate loading screens. I want a seamless world with an immersive experience.

But yeah, I’m in the minority.