Tuesday, December 9, 2008

So How's the PvP Server thing goin?

Figured I'd float a few ideas out there regarding the switch from PvE to PvP server.

Short Story: Jimminy Christmas!!! Please, pretty please, with sugar on top, can we switch the guild over to a PvE server????

Medium Story: Overall, playing on a PvP server isn't too bad for a carebear who likes to run around in a Raiding glass cannon spec and Raiding glass cannon gear with a Gorilladin pet. Its just that when you're on a mission, very focused on what you want to accomplish and the amount of time in which you want to accomplish it....well...that's sorta when PvP ugliness tends to crop up.

Long Story: Lets see how long I can stretch this one out, shall we?

At least 80% of the time, you don't see any difference between PvE and PvP server, in my brief experience. Just do your thing, and everything is fine. But there's that other 20% of the time that things go some what differently. Lemme 'splain...

Start with questing...

When questing, regardless of faction or server type, you get competition with other players for resources. If the area is empty, you fly through quests, if the area is busy, it depends on the players. If they're same faction -AND- they actually accept your invite so as to work together to very quickly burn through the quests, its all good. If they're opposite faction, or greedy and think they'll quest faster solo, it slows you down a bit.

My general experience with Horde on Ner'zhul has been relatively peaceful. We typically quest side by side. Wave at eachother, salute eachother, apologize if we happen to fire a shot or two at them accidentally as our targeting automatically grabs the next target once our NPC mob is dead. Lots of love in the air.

But then you get the coconuts.

You can actually sense that bad news is coming as you fly into an area.

Take for instance, the frozen lake near the Hodirs. Kill about 15 elementals to collect 5 snow balls which will be used to cool off metal that the Hodirs want. I've ranted about this one before. Sometimes good here, due to insane respawn rate, sometimes bad here, like this morning.

As you fly in, you can just tell that its gonna suck. You see a few red nameplates. Which is not always a bad thing. But, you see them acting very twitchy. Lots of kill-then-instantly-mount-flying. Lots of stealthing/unstealthing/restealthing. Generally exhibiting A.D.D. behavior.

And you then know that a couple 13 year olds are questing in your neighborhood before they head off to school, just like you're trying to bang out a couple dailies before you head off to work.

And they kill you. So you switch over to the Horn blowing quest for a bit. Kill one or two of the big guys. And the Jr High School Gang Bangers catch up to you, kill you. So you switch back to the snow balls. And they come back and get you again. Lather rinse repeat until your daily quest is done, and you're ready to wring the neck of the first adolescent you find IRL.

In summary, more often than not, daily questing sux donkey balls on the PvP server.

And with the gathering...

You get a little PvP action near mineral and herb nodes.

Its only normal to want to smack someone who's taking your node. I mean, you saw it on your minimap tracker. This node is yours.

Except that there's another player on it as you fly down through the tree canopy.

If its Alliance, you get grumpy, but fly off, hopefully to beat the competition to the next node in the circuit that you're both flying. End up playing leap frog with same-faction guys.

If its Horde, it depends. Titanium, its fightin' time. Anything else, I just fly off.

But if I'm the one who's there at the node first?

Seems that lots of Horde players share my philosophy. Normally just fly off. But at titanium nodes? Drop the gloves and start swinging. Sometimes they pick a fight at "lesser" nodes, but that's rare. You see, people flying around gathering are alone and are out there with a purpose. And you are also alone, and there for a purpose. I find that most of the Gang Bangers don't want a 1-on-1 fight. They want to gank you with 6 of their friends. One guy keeps kidney punching you so you can't do anything, and the others DPS you down in a couple seconds.

Fair fight? Who wants that?

Last night had the strangest one though. I'm out questing in western Icecrown to raise my Knights of the Ebon Blade rep. Stumble across a Icethorn node. Icethorn is going for about 55 gold per stack, so I'm a big fan.

Start herbing, and get jumped by a death knight. He makes quick work of me.

Ok, ok, fair is fair, you can have the node.

Corpse run, rez. Icethorn is still there. Ok, mana and health up. Start herbing. Get ganked again by the same guy.

WTF?

Corpse run, rez. Icethorn is still there, yet again. Ok, start herbing. Ganked. Dead.

Oh, I get it, you're bigger man than me, everyone trembles at the size of your mighty sword, I surrender. You clearly don't want the Icethorn, but you clearly have no plans to stop with the being a bully.

So I tuck my tail between my legs, and hop on my flying mount. Two seconds into the sky, another Alliance guy flys in, herbs the node, no Death Knight.

/scratches head?

I suppose he just doesn't like Night Elf Hunter Chicks.

And the winner of Most Annoying PvP-Server Behavior goes to....

Those mutha f'ers who hang out at the summoning stone of a dungeon or raid and grief any raiders who just want to get their team together and zone into the instance.

This is so. frikin. annoying.

Quick clear of Obsidian Sanctum before Naxx. Exit the instance. Horde waiting for us to exit one at a time. Come on guys. This is serving no purpose. Go away!

Make an attempt on a boss in Naxx. Wipe. Everybody fly back to the Arial Ziggaurat to zone back in. Frikin Horde waiting at the stone, pissed that they're unable to get enough players to form their own raid, picking us off one at a time. Or using some blast wave thingie to smash us all as we try to fly past into the dungeon.

Five players trying to go to Azjol-Nerub, and there's a quest guy out front, which means you've got to spend at least a few seconds just standing there trying to pick up the quests. And there's 8 stupid Hordites ganking away. Bah!

Just annoying. Should be Sanctuary for 40 yards around a summoning stone, but then again, I'm a carebear, through and through.

Sum it up...

Bottom line, PvP server is reasonable most of the time. When you spend most of your game time in a very focused, goal oriented manner, PvP server allows the coconuts to get in your way much more than I'd like.

Although, the one Titanium node that I actually took by force? That was kinda fun ;-)

No comments: