When I decided to focus on World of Warcraft for a while, I joined a bunch of newbies (and some oldbies from Alliance side) and we rolled Horde characters on a PvP server. It’s not clear in retrospect why we chose PvP. A number of us (myself included) have instinctively gone for carebear servers in the past, because PvP just seemed, well, so unfriendly; and a number of us have previously gravitated to RP servers.
The response of the guild members has been really interesting. A couple really hate our server, largely as a result of spending time in the Hillsbrad Foothills (a.k.a. the "Hobbesbrad Foothills" for reasons well known to any Horde toon who has tried to quest there; and which the subject line should make clear). For some reason there is a really bad Alliance-Horde dynamic on our server, and I’ve lost count of the number of times that lvl ?? Alliance chars wiped the floor with my mid-20s tauren. A couple of guildies have reported the Alliance toons at the same level attacking them, with one or two lvl 60 Alliance escorts on hand in the event that the fight doesn’t go as planned. Pointless, and stupid, and pretty close to my definition of griefing; but there it is.
On the whole though, I really quite like the PvP implementation in WoW. It’d be nice not to be ganked all the time by lvl 60s—like when I’m checking mail in a poorly defended town—but few things are as exciting as being out in Ashenvale with my hunter, and seeing a little dot appear on my mini-map with the name “Fortehwin” or “PwnzU” which turns out to be an evenly matched dwarf or human. My cat finds dwarves delicious.
But here’s the thing. I think that PvP is broken in WoW. Not because of griefing but because of the BattleGrounds. As people presumably know, BGs are capture-the-flag mini-games that are built as separate instances. They are tons of fun, and I understand why the designers put them in: lots of 15 y/o Halo players will pony up $12 a month on an MMOG if it replicates some of the features of multiplayer twitch-games like Unreal Tournament or CounterStrike. But BGs gimp the PvP game for those who want to have some concept of immersion or role playing. One of my chars had 4 kills out in Stonetalon and Hillsbrad this week, and I was quite pleased with his role in defending our faction (I would whisper “For the Horde” when I managed to bring down one of those filthy Alliance). But the significance of those kills was wiped out after spending one evening in Warsong Gulch: after a couple of BG sessions the toon had about 100 kills. So the satisfying kills are devalued by the kill-die-rez-kill-die-rez dynamic of the BG. At one point I was somewhat in awe of those who wore the honor rankings of First Sergeant/Senior Sergeant/etc, because I thought that it meant something within the milieu of the game. But of course (silly me) it just means that they spend their time playing the Halo-minigame that happens to sit within WoW, rather than actually playing WoW.
I’m not trying to tell “Senior Sergeant Biigbaalls” how to play the game, and it’s not that I object to having mini-games within MMOGs/VWs. Hell, put a casino in the world, or dueling, or monopoly, or canasta, or whatever. I could care less. But if you have a system for recognition of social capital within the role playing fiction of the milieu, don’t muddy it by using the same reputational marker for ability within an incommensurate system. And especially don’t devalue the recognition of something that’s consistent-with-your-world, with something that’s inconsistent. It’s like getting awarded XP for winning at Minesweeper or for shooting craps.
Recent Comments