World of Warcraft → [Vanilla] Good read on the Golden Age of World PvP

»wow.joystiq.com/2012/06/ ··· ssroads/

Last week, Tom Chilton revealed that Mists would have no dedicated world PvP zone like Wintergrasp or Tol Barad. Instead, Blizzard wants to encourage a more natural style of world PvP. It wants players to duke it out in actual questing zones. On PvP realms, it wants players to be free to attack towns and cities without overwhelming NPC intervention.

Since we're reviving WoW Archivist here at WoW Insider after a seven-month hiatus, now seemed like a good time to revisit the earliest days of world PvP.

It's no secret that world PvP has had a rough journey throughout WoW's history. Blizzard did all it could to discourage the wild Southshore vs. Tarren Mill clashes that made Hillsbrad Foothills a laggy, unplayable mess, often crashing the Eastern Kingdoms servers entirely. In patch 1.12, the developers gave us new objectives to fight over in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands, far away from where new players were leveling.

Ultimately, those objectives failed to capture much interest. Players mocked the Silithyst PvP objective as "sandlol." Further experiments in The Burning Crusade were only moderately more successful. In Wrath, Blizzard added the Wintergrasp PvP zone, and that has been the company's primary world PvP model through the last two expansions.

Before all of that, however, when the game was still so young that the vast majority of the playerbase hadn't yet reached level 60, there were raids on the Crossroads, in the heart of the infamous Barrens. And they were glorious.

Oh, those wacky Barrens

If any single zone deserved to get repeatedly pounded by enemy forces, it was certainly The Barrens. The notorious nature of Barrens chat began very early in WoW's history. In the weeks after the game's launch, people asking for the location of Mankrik's wife were not being ironic or even lazy. No comprehensive Wowhead-style database existed in late 2004. Thottbot was in its infancy. You often had to comb through message boards to find such answers. It was far more practical to simply ask your fellow players.

In my opinion, that one infamous quest is what led to the "Barrens chat" phenomenon. People got sick of answering the question, so they would begin to troll the people asking, and the chat channel devolved from there into mom insults, murloc puns, and Chuck Norris jokes.

It also didn't help that the original Barrens was a bloated zone with a leveling range so wide you could drive a pit lord through it. Officially, The Barrens was a 10-to–25 zone, but with rested experience, you could easily quest there till you were almost level 30. People who leveled slowly could spend weeks in the zone. (Leveling was a lot slower back then.) Recognizing this silliness, Blizzard cut the zone in half as part of the Cataclysm revamp.

To make matters worse, many Horde players who rolled three out of the four races (all but Forsaken) had no idea that across the ocean lay alternate leveling zones for that range. To most of us back then, the Eastern Kingdoms were as mysterious and rumor-shrouded as Europe would have been to Native Americans in the 16th century.

Thus, not long after launch, The Barrens became the most populous zone in the entire game. That vast, noob-saturated expanse made one juicy target for Alliance aggression. Much like those mysterious Europeans, the Alliance arrived in force, and not all of them were friendly.

The Crossroads bleeds

It was one evening during those first few weeks after launch that yours truly, a lowly 15 hunter, found himself embroiled in one of the weirdest virtual battles I've ever seen. While questing, a strange new message popped up in my chat window. Over and over again, it told me, "The Barrens is under attack!"

For once, Barrens chat actually became focused. "Allies at xr," people wrote. "High level, need help." I wasn't sure what kind of help I would be, but I went anyway. I ran there to witness the massacre firsthand. A group of seven or eight Alliance characters were gleefully murdering every NPC and flagged Horde player in the town. Not long after, it dawned on me: If the NPCs are all dead, I couldn't turn in any quests! I couldn't sell items or repair armor. This was a disaster!

When I clicked on the invaders, the game wouldn't even display their level. Their character panes showed only an ominous skull icon. Their shiny armor put my mismatched rags to shame, and they had mounts that most of us had never seen before. I attacked them, but my ineffectual blunderbussing did so little damage that they were content to ignore me until it was my turn to die.

More of the Barrens questers showed up at the Crossroads, but with such a large level difference, all we managed to do was line up for a one-sided butt-whuppin'. The town's guards didn't zerg like they do today, and they were easy to kill. The Alliance players were able to occupy the town with impunity, and they did so for nearly an hour. The Barrens, for all intents and purposes, belonged to them now.

Then the cavalry arrived: A few higher-level Horde players showed up on wolves and kodos. With our combined might, we were able to kill one of the Alliance raiders. The Alliance weren't about to give up their toehold in central Kalimdor without a fight, however. They could, after all, reduce most of us to a fine red mist with a single hit.

Word of the battle had spread. More and more higher-level Horde players had rallied to liberate the Crossroads. I remember seeing players from every level range there in defense of the town, as well as at least a hundred low-level noobs like me. Even dealing occasional, single-digit damage to a target adds up fast when there are a hundred of you!

With the ferocious effort, the tide turned, and the Alliance began a fighting retreat to Ratchet. The boat arrived just as the battle did, and the invaders ran for it. A few made it to safety, but most missed their getaway ride. We drove them into the ocean, murdered them as they tried to swim away, and fed their corpses to the (that last part may be an exaggeration).

The legacy of Crossroads raids

I'd like Alliance players to weigh in on this: Back then, were you aware just how strategically significant the Crossroads was to the Horde, or was it just an easy target? By slaughtering the quest givers there, the Alliance could stop three-quarters of the Horde's newbies from leveling effectively as long as they could hold the town. With no PvP system in place then, there was no other reason to do it except for the sheer thrill.

Other towns were sites of frequent PvP battles, too. Grom'gol was another popular target for the Alliance. The Horde descended on Astranaar at whim. My guild loved to give Theramore a thorough once-over back in vanilla, with the bonus of slaying that stuck-up wizardess Jaina Proudmore (who dropped quite a bit of gold by vanilla standards, I might add). I can't tell you how excited I am that the Horde is actually going to rough up Theramore in the actual storyline.

Such attacks made early Azeroth feel like a living place, where PvP had consequences. If you let the opposing faction take your towns, you simply couldn't quest. These raids created real enmity between players in opposing factions. In my guild, we truly despised the Alliance, and I'm sure the feeling was mutual. These hatreds united us and cemented loyalties to our faction of choice.

I believe such player-driven events contributed to WoW's skyrocketing subscriptions throughout late 2004 and 2005. Talking about my experience at the Crossroads certainly convinced some of my friends to buy the game. It was exciting to log in and not know what might be happening around the world.

For me and many players from the late 2004 era, those early town raids will always be special. They had an engaging, organic spontaneity that is often missing from WoW in 2012. With Mists, Blizzard hopes to battle-rez some of that magic. Can the servers handle the massive showdowns that may once again ravage the Crossroads? Time will tell!

Interesting read, I'll keep my opinions about what WOW claims to be Pvper.

If they change it so the PvP flag is active all the time, I'm not sure how I'll take it. If I'm questing/gathering, I want to be left alone, and do what I want to do. Now if I'm just goofing off, then it's a different story.

Great read. Brings back a lot of memories. I dislike current PvP (battlegrounds, arenas....yuck) but I loved world PVP back in the day, for all the reasons the OP listed.

I really hope it comes back.

Something I'd like to see are "recruitment camps" that requests the help of adventurers to assist in the assault of a town/village. Holding a town for a particular amount of time give bonus honor/some conquest. There would be a maximum length of time for the assault, during which you have to then protect an NPC while he searches for something. Kind of like a mini-BG in the world, and the zerging guards are "turned off" for the event. The defending side could either attack the invaders directly, or do repeatable quests to spawn NPC defenders. Or possibly a single quest that lets you hop on a flyer and do bombing runs - without flagging you for pvp, so that the low levels on PvE servers can help without getting creamed/corpse-camped.

The attack-initiating quests would pop up randomly, with no set respawn timer.

Ah, I loved those Terran Mill battles back in vanilla. I avoided the Barrens like the plague until I reached max level.

Bringing back the War in Warcraft is why I am sticking around. I hope that WoW really does bring back widespread world PvP.

While even I a PVP hater loved playing defense on some of those raids. I look at things today and think how much it would suck to sit down after a long day at work and have my quests on hold because some asshats decided to kill all the quest givers.

I always enjoyed killing the Horde Flight master at Thorium Pointe ang ganking incoming Hordies.....and of course TM/SS was always nice.

i agree with you Kearn, when i first started and horde would decimate GS, i would go looking for them now if they do it i get pissed and ? why am i still questing here anyway, i have found that as i age with this game i tolerate that kind of thing less.

How about this for an idea add in achevs for some world PVP stuff

like say, kill 10 quest givers in each zone

that isn't pvp. PvP achieves should be limited to PvP.

sidenote: with the change to vengeance... would tanking pvp folks taunting mobs during pvp allow for vengeance to stack?

Ok how about kill 10 lvl89 toons (or rather proper level toons for the zone, that are at the max level for the zone or lvl89 if its a lvl 89-90 zone) just so that it might be hard to find them

Ah the good old days of world pvp, nothing has ever been the same!
yes i got upset when i got ganked and I also turned around and did the ganking. Its true it was inconvenient but it was something you remembered and was involved in, active, dynamic and involving.
That i miss a lot, always being on guard and aware of you surrounding, never knowing if you going to be attacked.

The problem I have with this now is that many servers are so underpopulated or imbalanced that world pvp feels more like a gang bang than a real fight. Lvl 80s killing lvl 15's in one shot then vanishing only to retreat if anyone close to their level arrives isn't pvp. Pvp isn't dropping in to take the last 10% health on someone only to fly away, that is asshattery. Starting something and sticking around is what I miss, actually duking it out with someone or in a group. Perhaps it is the Alliance mantra, but teamwork and help don't seem to be part of the code.

I haven't heard about another change, however vengeance used to stack in PvP and they broke it because of how stupidly OP it was. So I'd be very surprised if they reverted their change.

I'm still talking about the same change where they made vengeance only stack when an NPC hits your toon. I was wondering if pvp types were taunting over random adds in world pvp to get vengeance to stack. Not that I care, just offering up pvp questions.

So that I understand, your question is:

If a Prot aggro's NPC's AND has enemy players on him, will vengeance proc?

Yes, I'm quite sure the NPC's would proc Vengeance and it would not be wiped simply due to the presence of PvP players.

It's just coded to only proc from NPCs, but not to wipe in the presence of PvP.

Hopefully I understood?

Also hows this for an idea

put a PVP tower (or such) in every new zone, then only when one faction controls a majority of the towers some special instance or such opens, to make it better than WG/TB have it be a room with both a raid and 3 dungeons with good loot.

Also have the time to capture not timed but once one faction has a majority of the towers and none of the fully captured are contested for say 5min then a 2hour window starts for access to the room

Also have an achev for each tower

It'd be like WG/TB but covering the WHOLE continent, and not set into a PVP raid, and not que able, just when its active you could switch on your PVP flag and try getting a tower for your faction

Then have some special quest givers spawn at each tower that would help with rep related to whatever faction makes sense for that zone

This would encurage some PVP thats not bound to one special zone, and anyone could take part, there would be an incintive, and it'd be hard because it'd be over the whole land and you wouldn't have some easy 40man groupping to get you going, infact 40 might not be enough.

also make the area around the tower not be phased

precisely.Sounds like an intricate blend of Zangarmarsh and Terrokkar pvp events. Not bad. I dislike the idea of opening a dungeon (we don't need another TB or VoA). The spirit shard mechanic was nice... just grant a little extra JP to the controlling faction, or give them minor Archy bonus to artifacts per dig. Whatever it is, it should be something that I would NEVER want unless I decided to join in the reindeer games (pvp).

Uh no. Aggroing Mobs to get a little extra attack power is not going to help you in pvp. The extra damage you take while you are trying to pvp would get you killed. Tanks sucked back when pvp stacked vengance. The only class that was ok'ish was Blood DKs, and that was only 1v1 vs another melee DPS. So no, attacking mobs to get a little vengance while PVPing would be stupid.

the one thing that should be done to promote world pvp is server balance. who gives a sh*t about world pvp if the other faction out numbers you 20 to 1.

so stop server and faction changes to the higher population side. it goes hand in hand why "fix" world pvp when it's broken by server and faction changes. it'll still be broke even if they are able to bring back world pvp.

even servers that are relatively ballance 2:1 still have a losing side.... 2 vs 1 still mean you barely have a fighting chance. xrealm zones won't fix this. it's broken because of bliz's money grab.

I can't fully agree. The realm population counts characters, not players. If you fix world pvp (meaning give people the incentive to go do it) then you get small groups of people engaging in world pvp. The pvp community has an edge to them, and my server has entire guilds that switched factions to engage in pvp because it was so boring being all horde.

So, I tend to agree that if they aren't even addressing server imbalance they are in the wrong. However, I don't see it as complete waste of time to try to reinvigorate world pvp (from their perspective, not mine).

In a simplistic setup, I agree. Now, despite my loathing of pvp, I did get into some of the city raids when achievements were first put in... and when you are talking 2 raids versus 2 raids with heals and tanks, etc... who's gonna notice that extra mob beating on the tank feeding him attack power? (and... it wasn't just a little attack power.. it was broken. And they only fixed it by adjusting the source of vengeance).

It needs to be something that will keep people interested

Maybe special discount VP/JP vendors, though the interest in saving JP/VP by using them might diminish

It might be something like BC but in my idea one tower per zone, and every zone gets a tower, even one in a dalaran like zone if it exists (have a small PVP area with the tower)

Then make each zone get some perk if its held and the side holding it wins, something like more XP, more rep in that zone that has the annoying rep grind, health buff for the hard zone, maybe faster node respawning for Herb/mineing/ect, ect

but then if your faction got the majority of the zones that round then something special and long term interesting would open

Just not a single zone PVP area, the point of my idea is to spread it over the WHOLE MOP area, all MOP zones

right, I was thinking "blend of Zangarmarsh and Terrokkar pvp expanded to the whole map" but it didn't all make it to text, lol.

As for keeping people interested in pvp... Nothing about pvp is enduring. The fights are short... the corpse runs are short... the "victory" is short. It's repetition at its finest. The only thing that gets long is the rez timer if you are being focused or camped.

Oh, and I totally mistyped earlier when I said "JP". I meant Honor points. World pvp should provide a bonus to pvp only. Honor points for HK farms make sense. Discount Honor/Conquest vendors might be cool... differing slightly by zone, achievement for collecting a special item from each of the vendors on a continent.

OK, maybe a full group of discount JP/VP/Honor/Conquest vendors

but it'd be hard to win, the fight would be so wide spread and you'd have to hold the towers you claim till you have a majority and then 5 more min

the reason for 5 more min is maybe have an achev for getting all of the zones, make it a steped acheve, like majority +1, +2... +all

Also it might make a good reason for flying PVP vehicles, to help get people to another tower

And as to the issues
Short fights, the whole event would be untimed so if its at 50/50 and people give up someone could sneak in and grab 1 tower

Make the runs like on battle grounds when you've died attacking or defending a tower

As it'd be so spread out it'd take some time to win and the fight could go back and forth as you and a group of good players try to go take another tower and some bads are defending a tower you just claimed, also when the 2hours inbetween are up have the towers go neutral and port anyone standing on one away so no one has an advantage at the start.

The idea is make the fight interesting for PVP'ers and Pve'ers though not critical, so people would get into it but wouldn't feel they must do it, but then a guild might say, hay we have a new member lets get the vendors open to us so we can gear the newbe, or we have people leveling lets make it easier to get em to 90, or we need more flasks lets go get that zone so our herber can farm faster, ect

so some would want one zone's perks but would need to win to hold the perk for two hours.

The only angle they should take on "making it fun for PvErs" is to make them feel like they are missing out on a major portion of the game by not engaging in PvP. No justice or valor points/vendors... leave those in the capital cities.

World pvp runs counter to leveling toons. Maybe if your faction controls an area, you get level-appropriate pvp vendors or quest hubs for pvp loot? That could work. Then there would be the added incentive of "loggin' your main" to help win a zone so that you can log your new alt and do the pvp quests first for better survival. (I just realized that I'm judging this idea based on current pvp/pve gear disparity... I have no idea if my concerns matter in the MoP framework).

IMO it should be something like if you win you'll progress faster

be it by saving the 4 types of points when buying stuff as that seems like a good genral perk for wining the whole thing, then have some other perks per zone for the zones you won if your side won the whole thing.

So if you're side keeps winning you might want to focus on the zone you want the perk from, to help level you prof or to level an alt faster, or to gather matts for something

IMO my idea would mean a small discount on VP/JP/honor/Conquest points so if your capped you might be able to buy 1 more item, maybe a 2200 item would become 1900 just a small bit but just enough so maybe you get 1 more item that week, and then your guild gets gears that much faster so you can do the current tier faster

frankly, I find the mixing of pve and pvp rewards to be a horrible model for 2 reasons:
--it blurrs the lines between PvP and PvE servers. If the rewards and such are purely pvp centric, then there is nothing "missing" from the PvE servers.
--It encourages bad pvp. You get PvE geared folks trying to do pvp just for pve gear. It makes for bad pvp and horrible pvp experiences for those who don't want to pvp.

we already have the means to convert pvp currency to pve currency... so there is no need to make any singular even pay out both. Pvp earns Honor... PvE earns Valor... and if you want to convert the currencies for whatever reason you use a vendor to do so.

I would like Blizz to expand on the For the Alliance/Horde Achievement and make it part of a larger Meta. Include towns/quest hubs and even neutral cities.

Just station an elite npc "boss" in each town that has to be downed.
Rewards could range from titles/mounts/tmog gear with faction specific art.

There could also be achievements for defending as well.
Titles could be: Defender of the Alliance or Champion of the Horde, something along those lines.

Well you wouldn't be earing points just a limited time discount on spending them.

and you wouldn't have people autoflaged for pvp but if they aren't flaged then they couldn't capture the tower, and if they sneak on the tower unflaged then flagging themselves would port them away.

So the Pve'ers that don't want to PVP the reward would be minimal, but a nice perk for top guilds who hopefully would pvp with pvp gear to get the towers, because pve geared would be cannon foder.

For It would be something on all servers just optional so if you want to take part go for it if not don't, if you're a Pve'er and crap at pvp let the Pvp'ers get it done or become cannon foder.

you wouldn't have the limit on numbers that TB/WG had just all out server wide war for however long it takes, if there are a few bad Pve'ers pvping well they likely won't be in your party unless you invite them.

Also it'd be interesting to see some freshly respawned PVP'er running across the feild to get to the tower while some PvE'er is herbing or questing, so it'd server to liven things up