I had to take a break from World of Warcraft because it was fucking up my life. But after going cold turkey for a couple of months and with some free time over the holidays coming up I decided to ease myself gently back into it. Last night I hooked up with my guild on Kil’Jaeden and ran amok in Blackwing Lair, killing Nefarion with the greatest of ease.
But it’s interesting the changes you notice when you’ve been away for a little while. Not just in the game itself but in the population dynamics of the server. Apparently Kil’Jaeden has seen some major demographic changes recently, with once-dominant Horde guilds imploding and a gradual whittling-away of the Horde population in general. One of the major Horde guilds decided to reroll collectively on another server, while another had serious political intrigue and scandal which led to disbandment. Most of the prominent Horde players in that guild eBayed their characters and left for good.
There has also been some eBaying of prominent Alliance players (Grand Marshal level) who apparently hit some kind of ceiling in terms of what they felt they could achieve, but on the whole it’s been much more of a Horde problem. Which in turn becomes an Alliance problem, because many players in my guild (who love to PvP, and my guild was formed as a PvP guild) are finding quality Horde opposition fewer and farther between. Battleground queues can be horribly long because there’s just not enough Horde players to keep serving the Alliance waiting list. The general feeling is that, for serious Alliance players at least, KJ is now effectively a PvE server.
There has been some talk of wanting to move to another server. This is of course impossible right now, but at some point I guess Blizzard may include a fee-based server-switch program. No doubt they’ll do it if there’s money to be made, and I understand Sony made a boatload of cash with a similar program for EverQuest.
Just wondering if other players have seen a similar shift in their server’s Horde/Alliance dynamics…
I took 2-3 months off from the game as well, so that I could actually get work done like my employers expected me too.
I returned last week to WoW, but I rerolled on a different server. On Killrog, I don’t have the peer pressure of all the PVPers wanting me to play 24 hours a day…
but at some point I guess Blizzard may include a fee-based server-switch program.
Blizzard has said they’re not going to do this. There are server transfers on occasion for over populated servers when long queues and server performance becomes a problem. The transfers are also to specific servers so you don’t get any choice about where you end up. This is open now on my server and we’ve lost several prominent Horde guilds because of it, but the 700 person long queues are gone.
I wonder if the fee-based transfers will allow you to choose your destination server. Because I DO see a can of worms there.
A lot of people in my guild are saying they’d love to move to Archimonde, where Horde currently outnumbers Alliance. Problem is, I’m sure a lot of other guilds have the same idea. If Blizzard were to allow them all to move over, doesn’t that then instantly swing the balance back the other way and, basically, solve nothing?
It’s on! :) I don’t want people who leveled to 60 carebear-style on our server.
My rather large WoW guild is filled with people who are dedicated to fair play, sportsmanship, and being all kinds of nice. We split on to two server, a PvE, and a PvP. Tichondrius(PvP) has turned those of us there into heartless monsters.
I’m even resentful of the people leveling up in the mellow world PvP post-battlegrounds. Hell if I’m going to cut any slack to someone from a normal server.
Anyway, back on topic, our server has always been really well balanced, unfortunately, it’s a little overloaded. They also just opened up transfers and some large Alliance faction guilds left, which I’m worried might have thrown off the balance we had.
One person’s freedom ends where another person’s begins. It does nothing to you regardless. People will get to 60 regardless. You wouldn’t know the difference in any case.
I don’t want people who leveled to 60 carebear-style on our server.
Well, carebears are still paying customers, so IMO they should have some say in the matter. Anyway, it’s just more easy fodder for you 1337 types forged in the vicious Darwinian bloodbath of pvp.
One person’s freedom ends where another person’s begins. It does nothing to you regardless. People will get to 60 regardless. You wouldn’t know the difference in any case.[/quote]
You don’t think you’d notice the difference in combat between a player opponent who’d spent 60 levels gaining PvP experience, and one who hadn’t?
Nope. You’d either see a good player or bad player. And a person who’d switch from a pve to a pvp server would be a bad player for a little while if they’d never done pvp (which seems unlikely with battlegrounds). Eventually they’d become a good player.
That being said, I’ve seen plenty of bad players on pvp servers. As a mage, I’ve killed rogues ten levels higher than me. PvE player or bad player? You decide!
Battlegrounds aren’t much related to world PvP skill. There’s a whole world of techniques you learn the hard way – fighting multiple opponents, escaping a corpse camper, etc.
But, yah, WoW isn’t a terribly hard game, and a good player who hasn’t been exposed to it can pick it up after not too long I’m sure.
Well, carebears are still paying customers, so IMO they should have some say in the matter.
WoW on a PvP server is a very different game 1 to 60, and a significantly harder one. It is pretty weak to level up on the easy server and then buy your way over at 60 when soloing isn’t really so important anymore.
Charles is right though, it doesn’t really effect me, and I wouldn’t know the difference between a cruddy player who leveled on my server and someone who just transferred over from a PvE server.
Doesn’t stop me from thinking the person doing the transferring is lame though. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed, though, I’m sure, by a nice welcoming corpse camping or friendly mind-control assisted lava bath in blackrock mountain.
To tell the truth though, the reasons I want the inter-type transfers is
A) I have a duo I play with my girlfriend on a PVP server that isn’t enjoyable anymore because she doesn’t like pvping, and
B) I have a high level rogue on a PvE server that I started on the PvE server because PvP servers were a total pain in the ass pre-BGs, and I’d much prefer to take him back to a PvP server.
Fact of the matter is, I’m a PvPer at heart, and just got confused along the way, and would like to rectify it without playing through the low level content for the 30th time.
They are not gonna allow PvE->PvP, they’ve said that, and as noted, the PvP people would hit the roof. I don’t know if they are going to allow PvP->PvE, as that shouldn’t present as much of a problem. Hopefully they’ll get to this as soon as they get 1.9 out.
Some of this was overstated, some not. Yeah, we had a few large guilds reorganize, leave, whatever. Aesir broke apart, tried to reform itself a couple of times. Impact and VvV merged into a guild named Outbreak (and later again as Entropy), which promptly disbanded. As you said, some of the more prominent members eBayed their accounts (Mogrom apparently got some $900 for his character that didn’t even have full Might/Wrath).
But you’re right, KJ is now essentially a PvE server. Natural Horde Killers like to announce, once a month or so, that they’re closing down BRM to the Horde. The response is always that of derision – to the one time a guild on the server actually tries to do some world PvP.
Oh and Thunderaan summonings always turn into low-FPS bloodbaths.
I’m curious as to how other PvP servers are dealing. Do those also wind up being more like PvE servers with random ganking, or is it actually … yah know … fun for PvP?
