Wednesday, June 2, 2010

My two copper on...PvP behavior.

I come from a server where the population balance leans heavily to the Alliance, and thus the Horde have problems taking / keeping Wintergrasp for any significant amount of time. It's been that way for as long as I've been on Argent Dawn - I started there as Alliance on low-level characters, but then I transfered my Tauren Shaman and my Blood Elf Priest over as well as a couple higher-level Alliance toons I had chilling around on other servers, therefore condensing all my characters on one server. Faction transfers for raid spots happened and eventually it got to the point where it is now - all of my characters, with the exception of my paladin and a low-level warrior alt, are Alliance.

But during the time that I was Horde, I became acquainted with many players that, despite my time being primarily spent on the other faction now, I still consider friends.

Lately the guy who seems to be single-handedly able to rally the Horde into an organized group for PvP returned after a hiatus for real life reasons, and lately the Horde has been holding Wintergrasp more consistently. Which is great, fantastic for them. Despite the fact that my pally is horde, I hardly play her - I'm not too fond of melee classes in general and my healing gear needs a lot of work. My lack of anything really to hold me to that faction doesn't help - I don't know many people in the guild my paladin is in outside of the core officer team and I do not currently raid with them in any capacity. I'm just...kinda there, when I log in, have a few conversations with people via tells, and then get bored and log off.


So taking all this into consideration, lately when the Horde loses Wintergrasp they have elected to start camping the entrance to VoA, in a seeming attitude of "If we can't have it, you can't either." I have a good number of friends in this group and this is where the trouble lies. Doing it once or twice, okay. Doing it after a match where they lost by mere seconds? Yeah, I can see that.

Doing it over and over, after just about every lost match?

I regret to say that, even though people very near and dear to me are doing it, I can not justify the behavior. And this is where my heart aches. I don't like thinking negative things about people I care about and I'm non-confrontational (which might be an odd trait for a PvPer) and being so annoyed with people that matter to me makes me want to cry in real life.

I could justify it if it was occasional. But this? No. In my opinion it's like a spoiled, bratty child who breaks another kid's toy just because they weren't allowed to play with it when they wanted to. Admittedly the Alliance population of Argent Dawn isn't very good at sharing this particular toy, but the point remains.

But, you might say, you play Alliance. So of course it would seem that way to you. 


I thought about that. Honestly, I'm not typing this in a fit of nerdrage - I've managed to do my weekly quests and VoAs around their camping and it hasn't really affected me personally, outside of my feelings regarding friends participating in it. Even if I was still primarily Horde and even if I did still PvP with that particular group, I wouldn't participate in this. In my opinion, when the Wintergrasp match is over, it's over - if you won, congratulations, have fun doing your VoA for the week. If you lose, tough luck, and try harder the next match. I've never been one for camping and griefing and inconveniencing other players, even when I played on a PvP server. Sure, I'd occasionally gank them once or maybe twice, or take part in EPIC BATTLES IN STRANGLETHORN, but I would leave after maybe 20-30 minutes.

Maybe I'm just too nice to be playing this game. But I don't find enjoyment in making people frustrated or annoyed or angry. I make a pretty bad forum troll, as you can imagine. I don't find it fun to have 22 people pounce on a one or two unsuspecting players that can't even react.

I did a Wintergrasp on my Horde paladin, and I think I've discovered part of the problem, besides just the raw population imbalance. The Horde keeps using the same tactics that they used to use when I was Horde. It was a moment of epic /facepalm for me, and here's why.

Imagine the Alliance population of AD as a giant. A very large, frothy giant that has a lot of bulk but not a lot of brain behind it. Then condition said giant by using the same tactics over and over and over. Then complain when that giant expects your tactics and beats the smaller you to a grisly pulp.

Moral of the story? Horde, you need to switch things up if you want to win Wintergrasp at a sane hour.

3 comments:

  1. I agree with you, really. It's why I rarely venture into Wintergrasp, even when Hordeside is being 'organized' so to speak. I think the whole Flag of Ownership thing is pretty childish, too. I'm more than happy to see world PvP happen, but there is a fine line between World PvP and camping/ganking, the latter of which I personally associate with harassment. (I know most people don't share that view, though)

    If you get bored Hordeside too, give me a poke. I'm in the same boat really, though I don't know anyone on Alliance side either, so I suppose I have no excuse. At the very least I can run things with you for healy gear or RP with you. I finally got around to writing an MRP description for my mage, hah >_>

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  2. Hey I read your blog sometimes and this post is relevant to my interests :D
    I love to camp WG. Not to really gain anything measurable, but because I think it's fun. Win, lose, just for no reason at all besides the fact that it's fun. I attack people mining nodes, picking herbs, looking for players to fight, anything. I would feel bad, except it's my opinion that if Blizzard intended it to be a non-pvp zone in between battles, they could. But they didn't. To me, that extra "risk", that having to look over your shoulder in that zone even on a PvE server, is the cost people pay for unusually good/easy to get herbs, mining nodes, easy to do quests, and loot-fest raid instances. People seem to think that gain only comes in the form of shiny epics in your bag. Sometimes I'm just as happy participating in pvp in one place for an hour as I am when I get a new piece of tier from VoA :)
    Plus, I love when you're camping the VoA entrance you get the entire raid to band up against you to kill you. It makes it fun to see the group working together to protect people, you know, so I can go "d'aww they got me..."
    -Poptart
    http://www.poptartica.net

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  3. Don't get me wrong, I -love- killing people one-on-one in Wintergrasp. Especially death gripping people when I go on Janailla (310 speed for mining ftw!) and killing them right on top of the node, and then mining it right in front of their face.

    It's not the world PvP that bothers me at all, it's the 22 vs 2, and just the general attitude of the group in general. For example, we were informed by a person in our guild who was on vent with them that they wanted an organized raid to play against. We brought one, and they promptly ran away. So I dunno.

    Also welcomes to meh blog :D <3

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