60. Feral Druid. Raiding guild, or rather the ‘big’ guild’s feeder guild. Okay, I’m in Molten Core for the first time, hey man, what do I do, besides bring FR gear? You heal. Okay.

Six months later (or a year, I can’t remember, it was a while ago, before the colostomy and my wife dying) I said fuck it, I’m done with this healing shit and quit WoW for the first of three times. BWL up to killing Somethinglord whatsisface.

GET OFF MY LAWN.

You fucking kids.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/09/24/breakfast-topic-what-was-your-first-raid-experience/comments/34829437/

It’s a PVP server, why do you insist on only doing PVE or “fair” (i.e., instanced or 1:1 ratio) PVP?

You have a flying mount, you’re functionally immune to PVP while on it and more than 40 yards from the ground.

No-one’s holding a gun to your head forcing you to be on a PVP server, or forcing you to go outside the cities where you can queue and re-queue and teleport back and forth to your precious little heart’s content.

So, why complain mang?

1. Don’t be on a pvp server if you don’t like unfair pvp. Transfer to a PVE server.
2. Call friends.
3. Make friends.
4. Call guildies.
5. Find someplace else to level.
6. Corpse-run towards guards. Then hearth or get summoned.
7. Always be in a queue of one sort or another.
8. Level another character.
9. Network with people facing the same problem.
10. Go make a sammich. Eat the sammich. Check the AH on your bank alt.
11. Go talk to people on another server, preferably a PVE server.
12. Just leave, we don’t want non-PVPers on our PVP servers.
13. Level in BGs.
14. Level in dungeons.
15. Level only in groups with other players, pref. your friends. More people = more ideas on how to overcome common obstacles and have fun together.

You’ve got 15 alternatives.

The more I think about this, the more I realize it’s a reflection of two different types of people, or their approach to life and social justice:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_playing
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/12…etting-it.html

• -You are not responsible for what happened to you
• -You are always morally right
• -You are not accountable to anyone for anything
• -You are forever entitled to sympathy
• -You are always justified in feeling moral indignation for being wronged
• -You never have to be responsible again for anything

VERSUS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty
Liberty is a concept in political philosophy that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions. 

Forgive the last one, I couldn’t find anything good on wikipedia that was similar to the regular, run-of-the-mill social conservative/GOP type definition of personal responsibility.

The “Victimhood”-seekers are the people who don’t see how they should be held accountable for choosing to roll on a PVP server. They instead focus on how bad or evil the people are who take advantage of the rules or the in-game situations to gank/camp/grief them, even when the rules explicitly allow things like killing a character 80 levels below them.

The people who focus on the idea of “Personal Responsibility” generally believe that life or the game is fair to begin with, the good rise to the top and the bad fall beneath their feet. They focus on taking individual account of the action of clicking “Yes, I’d like a PVP server, please.”

Liberal or Conservative? Personal Responsibility or Let’s-all-be-friends-and-work-together? Should the people who take the time and effort to get good/high level/gear/skills/knowledge reap the rewards or should they be considerate for those who have not (yet)?

Take your pick.

http://us.blizzard.com/support/artic…rticleId=20456

“Abolishment”

Never been banned.

Have gotten a lot of people banned though.

I don’t like being harassed.

Like when I was mind controlling Gamon (with exciting NEW Death Knight punting abilities at Wrath launch) and kicking the AH bots away from the auctioneers. Occasionally I would find an actual player. Sometimes he would say mean words. I’d remind him that Gamon is A) Mind Controllable and B) able to kick players so C) clever use of game mechanics. One particular person was incredibly insistent that I go fornicate myself. I jokingly mentioned that “instead of buffing Shadow Priest, they gave us a new puppet so we had something to entertain us while the viable DPS are raiding”. He snarkily insinuated that my mother was of ill repute. I alerted him to my distaste on the subject (my mother, not her ill repute), and ignored him. He switched characters to take another shot at her reputation. I reminded him that circumventing ignore for repeated harassment was bannable, assured him that (although his knowledge of my mother was unnatural) the subject was uncomfortable, ignored him, and proceeded to punt him so he couldn’t log out (it kept him in combat and constantly interrupted his logout timer). He eventually made it to another alt. And another.

A day later his GM informed me that I was a series of terrible names, and I had just gotten their main tank banned for the weekend raid. The next day, the GM returned on a separate (unbanned) account to inform me that I had just gotten their off-tank banned for the weekend raid.

Two days later, I received many hurtful letters from many guildies explaining how I was a very bad person and their guild is falling apart because of me. It was about this time that a GM informed me that Gamon would not have his punt next patch, as many people have complained about it. I was however, free to “enjoy it while I can”, because it IS indeed hilarious, and although he approves, it is impacting the experiences of others in an (arguably) negative way. He assured me that no negative actions would be taken against my account, and he was sorry for the attitude of the recently disbanded guild.

A day after that, I received another letter, this time from the wife of the former GM, saying that both of his accounts were permanently closed for A) continued harassment B) circumventing ignore requests C) directing his guild to harass another player D) ignoring temporary bans and multiple warnings to cease harassment on the innocent, raidless Priest.

She then thanked me for giving him a reason to quit this time sink and spend more time with his five (lawl breeder) children. His combined 200 days /played would now sit, frozen in time, as a testament to my glory.

I then logged out. Took a deep breath, and laughed harder than I ever believed possible.

http://www.wowpedia.org/Server:Tichondrius_US

http://www.wowpedia.org/File:Miketichnotforyou.jpg

http://www.mystic-one.com/2006/05/03/tichondrius-is-not-for-you/
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060703191856/http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.aspx?fn=wow-realm-tichondrius

Tichondrius is one of the oldest wow pvp servers, and got very crowded due to its reputation as a spot where good pvpers hung out. This lead to long queues to log in, which pissed people off on the server.

1. People would come onto the server forum (now no longer accessible due to multiple official wow forum revamps) and ask questions like “Is this server good?” which lead to:

2. Players already on the server wanting to keep more players from rolling new characters (“toons”) on an already overburdened server.

3. Someone started the server motto of “Tich Is Not For You.”

4. The motto was photoshopped into numerous images.

5. Images posted in “Tichondrius Is Not For You” thread.

The thread is no longer accessble. Very few of the images still are. They were funny. I’d like to see them again and put them up on my blog or someplace where they’ll last.

1. Implementing some sort of dismounting-parachute system along the lines of what I’ve previously proposed in this blog and elsewhere (MMOC etc.) would be a very time-consuming and unstable, i.e. bug-prone thing to do, and only benefit ~50% of the playerbase. Less than that, even, as many people on Pvp servers simply don’t want to be bothered, esp. when they’re on the under-populated side of the server.
2. Sanctuary Auras – I’d like to punch …never mind. The Horde and Alliance should come together as one and work for a common benefit, as part of the lore and all that. No fighting, please, we’re at war.
3. It was too damn much to work with in TBC so they stuck to the “Flying Mounts give Pvp immunity or damn near” paradigm and it’s worked fairly well since then, pushing those pesky Pvpers into instances and arenas and BGs with objectives and all that where they can’t hurt the raiders trying to get into their raid instances or the alts or the newbies leveling up.
4. Rp servers and Pvp servers cause the most number of GM tickets in the game [blue post source]. People don’t like to be bothered when they’re just hanging out, or just farming or questing or traveling. You sit down in front of the computer, you figure out what it is that you want to do, you get going on doing it and WHAM someone inconveniently stops you from doing it. Imagine you’re on your bank alt and someone kills the bankers or auctioneers. HOW DARE THEY? The easier and more prevalent such things become, the more trouble for the GMs and Blizzard and the less smooth the progression for the vast majority of the players. More trouble – less revenue and more expenses. That leads to less money left over to hire more artists and developers and dungeon designers. That means less content.
5. People don’t want empty sandboxes. They want risk-less gameplay, certain rewards and a theme-park experience where everything is safe and secure and fun and you’re assured that whether you win or lose the BG or dungeon or raid – you’re still assured of some points or badges or tokens or whatever. In a raid, even if you don’t get the drop you want, at least you get some badges. Or points. If something gets in between you and that goal, you’re gonna be pissed.
6. People roll on servers due to the friends/guild that’s on that server. The players have been progressively more conditioned to disregard the difference between Pve and Pvp servers. To change that dynamic now would be a drastic, painful and unpopular thing to do.
7. Instances and BGs and arenas are simple, modular content that can be churned out reliably and on-time and won’t cause a bunch of lag or more GM tickets compared to outdoor open world content. It simply doesn’t make sense to make content that focuses people out in the world with tangible rewards, esp. on the lop-sided servers that are almost the rule these days. Or rather – they FEEL like the rule. You’re more likely to remember that one time you got roflstomped by 5 opposing-faction players than you’re likely to remember the five times you and your friends steamrolled that one enemy player.
8. WG and Tenacity failed. Blizz realized that it has to be 1:1 Pvp ratios or the whole thing craps the potato-field. Hence Tol Barad on a separate server, no flying mounts there, a timer and all that. This is enjoyable and no-downside-content for Pvpers and Pve’ers alike, no matter what server you’re on. You click the queue, you accept the summon and you know what’s going on and there’s obvious informed consent right before you enter into combat. Unlike the not so obvious consent when you pick a Pvp server. It’s there and most people know about it, but they also know about flying mounts and the fact that it’s pretty hard to camp a thinking player these days.
9. The LFD system and the queue-for-BGs system was a resounding success. The Xbox and Playstation crowd finally got their near-instant queues with no social interaction or organization required. Push a button and BAM – you’re fighting bosses and collecting loot. With the effect that the world of warcraft outside, the open part, is mostly just for farming and leveling and archaeology botting. Err, I mean archaeology GRINDING.
10. Making people able to initiate Pvp at will again on Pvp servers would not make for a shiny, eye-catching bullet point in an expansion or patch announcement – and less than half of the playerbase would like it. The majority would be annoyed that Blizzard caters to “griefers” (i.e., Pvpers) instead of focusing on churning out more “content” (i.e., another raid), a few would be outright pissed off – those who rolled on Pvp servers to raid or play with friends – and a minority would squeal in joy at the chance to make use of their arena/RBG-sourced gear against others of such ilk. Or failing that, against others lacking such gear, like alts and newbies and freshly dinged levelcap people.

So, there you have it, fellas and chicas – it’s simply not in Blizzard’s (or yours, probably) best interest to have people be able to initiate Pvp on Pvp servers left and right and up and down and whenever. It’s simply better for the overall success of the game that we be able to go Pvp Immune-damn-near just by mounting up and flying straight up for a few seconds.

2. Complete all first-tier dungeons on Heroic before you can zone into the first raid tier (Heroic or normal) or second-tier dungeons on normal.

3. Complete the first tier of raids to unlock the second tier of raids and complete the second tier of dungeons on normal to unlock those same dungeons on Heroic.

Simple even stepping-stone to make sure that everyone in Heroics has seen that dungeon – and all other dungeons – on normal on that character before they’re messing with Heroic modes.

Make sure that there are weekly raid quests for old-tier raids so that someone who comes to an expansion kinda late has a chance to “catch up” to their guild. Weekly raid quests should never be for “current” tier content, always for old, easy stuff. No-one should ever have to wait more than a week or at most two, for their guild to do a run through an old tier to complete the weekly raid quests and incidentally get someone’s alt or a new raider keyed up.

4. Every time you defeat a tier’s end boss you get a BoA libram. That libram can be used to unlock that difficulty and everything of lesser difficulty for one of your alts.

Gets new people a chance to see more content. Makes more people appreciate all the hard work and the storyline of each expansion.

Pisses off a few hardcore raiders.

No rep grinds to unlock stuff.

No specific drops or annoying quests that require you to run back and forth. Just kill the end boss of this or that and now the character you’re currently on is ready for the next step, while one of your alts is ready to step into the stuff you just completed.

Hrm, I reckon it’s rewards that ruined world PvP. Everyone harkens back to TM/SS as the holy grail of world PvP, and that was before and maybe slightly after the honor system was implemented (but before real rewards existed from it). I think you can encourage world PvP all you want, and if there aren’t rewards behind it you’ll keep people interested for about as long as it takes them to realize there are other things to do that give real power increases. Why would anyone spend any amount of time just pushing back and forth for no reason when you can spend your time toward actual rewards and character improvement? Maybe there are some of you, but I guarantee it’d be short lived.

I mean shoot, you have Isle of Quel’Danas or even quest hubs in Cataclysm where people are literally forced together, and there’s complaints that they just want people to stop PvPing so they can get their stuff done so they can get their rewards. That’s kind of unfair because I know many did enjoy those situations, but somehow it never meets the awesomeness of TM/SS, and I reckon it just never could again.

The best I can think that you could do is create a specific world PvP zone where you don’t allow flying mounts, give some objective to tug-o-war over, and so you can justify giving some semi-meaningful rewards and keep people interested you’d need to find some way to even up the sides (because world PvP is inherently going to be unfair). I think you do all that and you probably have the best working solution for bringing back world PvP.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2228418515?page=2#32

Open world pvp is its own reward, mostly. Some people love it, some hate it. Some people hate pvp and are only pvp servers due to friends or raiding guilds or whatever, and don’t really care for the pvp-anywhere game mechanics.

1. No-one on the dev team is terribly concerned or obsessed with making the open world a place where much action goes on anymore. EPL died. Silithus died. Hellfire Peninsula lived and still lives, in a mostly-comatose sort of way. Zangarmarsh died. Terrokkar Forest lived for a bit and then died. Halaa lived and died. World Dragons was tons of fun and died. Open world bosses get monopolized and aren’t a fair fight and contribute to people seeking better opportunities on the over-populated side of a server. WG Tenacity failed but the 1:1 WG and TB kinda works, and drives people to transfer to the under-populated side, which is good for the game overall, with more balanced populations.

2. Blizzard has a long history of solving problems by adding new features and new content. See the new-expansion ability inflation index – the number of keybinds and abilities needed for each class keeps going up with each new expansion. IQQ. WG. Tol Barad. More, newer, flashier. Kinda like the US intelligence community, political programs and whatnot – but I digress. New features make for nice bullet points and flashy advertising for new additions to the game to draw back old and bring in new subscribers whose money pay for developers and infrastructure to keep the game fresh six years later.

3. Blizzard has a long history of wanting things to be accessible, which sometimes ends up being design for close to the lowest common denominator. A new non-combat pet. A new dungeon instance. A new BG. …All things that are easy to access and good for everyone. A new arena – only really useful for those who enjoy arena, and all kinds of benefits-this-class or that-team-comp issues. A new Heroic Algalon or Heroic Sinestra – only really useful for the hardcore raiders until the content is passé. More teleports. More instanced content. …Useful for everyone. Convenience is king.

4. People don’t like losing control over their characters. People want to get their daily done in peace and quiet and don’t bother me when I’m doing ____ or this or that. People don’t like being stunlocked or CC-trained or Fear-bombed. People like certain rewards and the feeling that even if they didn’t win, they got something out of it. Hence honor points for losing a BG, rating never goes down in RBGs, badges and points even if you don’t get loot in a raid. Open world pvp has nothing for the loser. It’s just an inconvenience.

5. The blue poster above, Bashiok, wants to solve this by creating a Pvp ghetto, an area without flying mounts. Tol Barad, essentially. Add new. Keep things separate and fair and even. Sure it would work, but it’s a ghetto, a reservation and really just another BG, though server-specific. It’s a good start and I would support it. But there’s better solutions.

6. Automatic or on-use parachutes standard equipped on all flying mounts. Or make it cost 100g. Or 1000g. The dev’s know exactly how long a character has to fall in order to hit the ground and die. Make the parachute auto-deploy one second before that. Or make it pop up a button on the screen. Or make clicking the mount-macro/button/hotkey deploy the parachute. Same thing for the person who accidentally or on-purpose dismounts in the air (i.e., the attacker).

7. Each class gets one spec with a talent or ability changed that can now dismount an enemy player. Benefits – can be skewed to benefit tanking specs and thus help the tank shortage a tiny bit by giving them a perk for playing that spec. QQ ensues.

8. Or each spec gets a dismount ability. Less QQ about “why can’t my spec…” and more QQ from “wtf did I just die for?”

9. One month of free transfers from Pvp to Pve servers as long as you go to the under-populated side of the new server. Get the people off the Pvp servers that don’t like Pvp. QQ ensues due to “but my friends and my guild…” which is a very valid concern.

10. Or …make the entire system opt-in to cut down on the QQ. Make someone type /pvp to stay both Pvp flagged and able to dismount and be dismountable – so that people who don’t like Pvp on Pvp servers can continue to be un-dismountable on a flying mount on Pvp servers. And/or put a 30-second delay on it. Advantage would be that it uses current mechanics and just plain de-flags someone for Pvp after 30 seconds on a flying mount that’s actually flying. Disadvantage would be that now they can just hover over the ground. Add a altitude-check to fix that, but now you’re just over-complicating this with confusing mechanics. The “opt in” mechanic is already present – in that you asked to be on a Pvp server. That’s when you really “opted in”. But now you’re more at risk than you previously were, and this needs to be addressed.

11. Or add a different opt-in mechanic for flying mount pvp initiation. Have one flag for Pvp and another for whether or not you want to be able engage in dismounting and being dismountable while flying. Kinda weird to have that on Pvp servers, but that’s really what people are already doing – they’re just mounting up and flying away as their version of saying “Hey, don’t touch me” and that’s what people have been used to generally since January 16, 2007 with some exceptions (Boomkin, Combat Rogues, Elemental Shaman, Firemages etc.). Adding yet another little icon to everyone’s character portrait is really just too much, though. More UI clutter we don’t need. Not intuitive.

Do we really need rewards for Open world pvp? Hell no – it’d be great to have, but only really if it’s inside a 1:1 ratio zone. Add another TB-style zone with a timer about an hour off from TB. Awesome, I’d love to be doing BG-style action with and against people I know. LFD = 4chan and people don’t care how rude they are since they’ll never see you again. BGs – same, plus you hardly ever get to know anyone on “your” team and there’s zero consequences for acting out or being a jerk. No-one cares since you’re all just anonymous random internet people. It’s the very antithesis of community-building. Or you could start counting Open pvp honor kills separately. Or build achievements for it. Or set up little “King of the hill” markers out in the world. But you gave up on that when the EPL/Silithus/Zangarmarsh model bombed so hard. Nice try with WG though, and TB seems to have finally worked out.

As you can see above, all the obstacles to Open pvp are solvable. But the will to do so isn’t there. The will to change the flying mount mechanic isn’t there. Why?

A. Bugs. The PTR can only catch so much. Changing long-standing mechanics take time and don’t go right the first time. It would be a mess. Every single mount would have to be checked for bugs with this.

B. Melee specs with a dismount-ability tied in (Colossus Smash, Ambush etc) would have to time their attack very well to be successful while a spec like Boomkin with Typhoon would be more forgiving in aiming. Most people have lag issues. Most people aren’t experts on timing and judging how fast to fly and where to dismount for an attack. People don’t like having to learn new skills, or being told that they have to practice or don’t have the skill/timing to be successful.

C. There’s about 255 Pvp + Rp-Pvp servers. There are about 260 Pve + Rp servers. Pvp and Rp servers cause the most GM tickets, according to some blue poster some years ago. This would just add to the amount of GM tickets. Add bugs. Add QQ. And further differentiate Pvp servers from Pve servers, thus bucking a huge, long and very successful trend that’s been going for 5 years now of homogenizing Pvp and Pve servers. The amount of developer time and headaches this would take is VERY BIG. For who? For those people already on Pvp servers that would enjoy this. That’s less than half the Wow playerbase. Add in a few Pve-server players who would transfer to Pvp servers for this. Either case you’re looking at designing for a niche group of players. This doesn’t affect or attract EVERYONE. It isn’t accessible or wanted by even 50% of players.

D. Making this happen doesn’t cause headlines. It doesn’t make for nice cool shiny bullet points in a new expansion or content patch to draw new players or draw old ones back. It essentially just goes back to the TBC era and fixes something.

Persistent world that the player can affect over months of playing.

No loading screens. Ok – the two original continents of Wow I’m comfortable with.

Very few teleports that aren’t player-initiated skills like the original warlock summons in Wow. No trouble with the current form of demonic walk-in dresser/exhibitionist though.

Explosions where explosions are due – i.e. a mage’s fireball/big fireball causing an explosion would be fine. A big cat smacking you with a claw shouldn’t cause a huge big red swirly cloud thingy. That’s just dumb. Healers (see below) should get a bit more out this to support that playstyle.

Remember the LOTR Battle of Balin’s Tomb? I do. Remember the tank and the healers and the dps standing around the back of the boss? I don’t. It was all a big mess and movement and survival and helping each other.

A User Interface is more or less required – you can’t really get away with not having one. So a minimap in the bottom corner that shows when you mouse over it. An action bar with skills on it. Click an NPC/player and there’s a red/green circle around their feet. No health bars over their heads. No casting bar – all just glowing hands and visual in-game indicators about what’s happening. Blood dropping from them to indicate how badly they’re hurt. Blood dripping from you to indicate how messed up YOU are.

Lie down or crawl or crouch to move stealthily. Now you’re much harder to target. Disable floating text over enemies heads and now your own is disabled for enemies. Your choice how stealthy and hard your game is.

Wow got the death penalty mostly right. The game should be fun, not an exercise in punishment. Opt in to loot enemies gold to a tune of 10% but only if they’ve opted in to have such done TO them.

Respawns in battlegrounds on a fixed timer. Die, eat a mandatory 30-45sec rez timer. No “waves”.

Battlegrounds are actually “in” the world and have real consequences. Stuff like imbalanced servers being dealt with by enforcing a 1:1 ratio and making defenses stronger the further you’re pushed back. Each zone has a limited number of your faction allowed in.

Each village capturable. Its questgivers move to the nearest town as refugees – and keep their quests.

Arenas are in the world and spectators allowed – needs care to avoid massive lag environment.

Opt-in (?) collision avoidance. Griefing is avoided by giving a button to disable for 30 sec, broken by presence of enemy players.

Server and faction transfers cheaper if you go to the underpopulated side of a server.

Real differences between factions, not just cosmetics and a few racials.

RP encouraged with “karma points”.

Nice play encouraged with same.

Karma points redeemable with cosmetic prizes. Can only be given so many times to the same player per account. Shared on forums.

Your account’s “main character” name is immediately available to anyone that mouses over your alt. Incognito mode available, but only so many times per week. Encourage playing nice. Encourage long-term relationships on the realm and on forums.

Servers located in server clusters as standard – but each server designated according to a metropolitan area or region, by population – to encourage real life meetups and bonding.

1. Hardcore arena pvper. “Get skill or get lost. Arena rating is skill. 3v3 and 5v5 is all that matters. If you didn’t ‘get Glad’ in multiple seasons then you suck. Reckful is god. PVE takes no skill.”

2. Hardcore raid pve’er. “Get 13/13 Heroic or you’re nothing. Pvpers are such asshole elitists. I should be able to compete with my Pve gear in BGs and arena. Arena teams take so much less organization and preparation than raids.”

3. Casual. “More Heroics, please. Why can’t I raid? I should be able to see all content even though I have a life and don’t have time to play at set times for hours every night.”

A. The nice person. “I like to help people and feel satisfied when I know that the group survived because I healed everyone. I like to play in groups and I care about people in my guild.”

B. The leader. “I like knowing that I controlled the fight and we’re now at the next boss because I made this happen and organized it. People follow me because I’m good.”

C. The misanthrope. “If you don’t like being ganked I suggest you look into playing in an environment more suitable for people who don’t like to pvp. F*** this – I’m only in this <arena/BG/raid> for the gear.”

D. The Collector. “I like companion pets. I like to collect mounts. I like to collect achievements – they’re so fun and addictive! Sweet, I’m only two characters away from one of each class at level 76 or above!”

E. The pretty-things-person. “Oh look – I have my very own pet wolf, I’m gonna name him Buster! Oh, I just love my new outfit! Oh look, I can make shiny things! I like to make things!”

F. The troll. “Anal [Thunderfury]! That’s what she said! Hey, can someone link Thunderfury? Dude, no way anyone’s gonna pay that much for <this>. This game sucks, trade chat is the only fun.”

G. The over-achiever. “Dude, I’m at 3000 arena rating. Dude, I’m 15th in the world in raiding. Dude, I totally controlled the Auction House for the past three weeks.”