3 Reasons PvP is the Best Part of the Game

Full Disclosure:  I am not a PvPer.  I do it sometimes for fun but I prefer scripted content.  Leveling, quests, raids, dungeons, and general busy work.  I play to pass the time not to compete for the most part.  With that said I do like to PvP I just don't do it often and I have always loved world PvP. 

With the addition of cross realm zones world PvP, at least for now while everyone is bored, is back.  So to those that have never really got into it now might be the time to take a look at it and see why PvP really is the best part of the game.  Even on PvE servers PvP is huge at the moment, so take advantage of it, find some friendlies and some hostiles and get down and dirty.

PvP Is Real MMO Content:

Sure, you need 5 people for a dungeon, you need 10 or 25 for a raid and you might even be in a guild and occasionally do things with people in your guild or pug.  With all that said, PvE content is not very MMO.  It might be group content but it does not inspire people to reach out and meet people or work with people that they do not know at all on the spur of the moment like PvP does.  It is something you do in a preset group, usually of people you get to know but it is never spontaneous.  PvE is planned, PvP happens.

Player vs player however is the exact opposite.  It encourages the MMO aspect of the game.  You see a group of people being attacked, you join in.  You are getting attacked, people you never met come to help you. 

You are taking a ride on the tram just relaxing and enjoying your day and see flashes of light coming from the side and you jump off instinctively to see what the heck that was and notice a small group of eight or nine horde and four or five alliance trying to stop them from summoning more.  The choice is now to let others know or to join the fray and help your fellow alliance mates.  You put a quick call out to guild letting them know where the battle is and jump into the battle. 

In a matter of time there are 30 horde and 40 alliance there and it is a blood bath that no one really wants to give up on.  You just experienced the beauty of PvP and the MMO aspect.  A group of 70 people are there and perhaps you knew 5 of them before that day and even after will only know 5 of them but you enjoyed an experience with all of them.

That is what an MMO is all about.  Have you ever had people you did not know come in during the middle of a raid fight to come assist you?  Nope, not possible.  Have you ever spontaneously, while not even grouped, taken down a raid boss with random people?  Nope, not possible.

In PvP you do not need to have a group, you do not even need to have a plan or an agenda, it is us vs them whoever the us is and whoever the them are.  There are good guys and bad guys, the hatfields and the mccoys, you know who your friends are and who your enemies are and you work together even having never spoken a word with one another.

This is the number one reason I enjoy world PvP.  While I prefer the scripted content that I can move at my own pace with I do really love the spontaneity of PvP when it comes from nowhere and just happens.  It actually makes the many people of the game work together for a common goal of kill the other guy.  It puts the MMO into an MMO.

PvP is Player Driven:

When I have no characters to level, no quests to do, no dungeons to run or no raids on the calender I am bored.  No such thing with PvP.  As long as there is someone somewhere in the world that is a member of the opposing faction there is something for me to do.  Kill him.

When I PvP, you are my content.  They do not need to make new quests for PvP, you just need players.  They do not need to make new raids, you just need players.  As long as there are players playing there is a war on 24/7.

You do not even need new zones.  One zone is as good as the next.  While where you fight changes how you fight it is not as important.  The most important factor of player vs player is that there are players.  PvP is player driven content.  A raid boss has a strategy and while you can continue to get better and do it cleaner and sooner or later master it there is no such thing in player vs player.  You could end up running into the same person 10 times in the field of battle and the fight be completely different all 10 times.  As player driven content there is no script.  Just because that paladin popped his bubble early last time doesn't mean he will this time.  Just because you were able to LoS that mage this time doesn't mean he will fall for it next time.  Just because he had help this time doesn't mean you won't catch him one on one some day soon.

Player driven content means that there is always something new even when it is doing the same thing over and over.  It is easiest to design for because there is no need to design anything.  Just put people on different sides in the same area and they will create their own content.

PvP is More Inclusive:

Don't down a boss?  You get jack.  Don't win the battleground?  You still racked up the honor.  Player vs players makes it much easier for anyone to get into it.   Sure, from the start with lesser skills and lesser gear you will find yourself taking more dirt naps than you would like to admit but when all is said and done you will have earned valuable honor points to help yourself gear up and get better. 

There is no second place prizes in PvE.  If you do not win you lose.  You get nothing.  PvE is not very user friendly content for someone that sucks at it or someone that is just trying to get their foot in the door and learn.  That makes PvP so much more inclusive.

Player vs player allows you to suck and still win. As long as you can deal with dying, and that is the hardest thing to learn for someone new to PvP, you will do just fine in time.  New player and old, good player or bad, you will still have to deal with people that are idiots in random content just like in PvE but ignore them and worry about yourself and getting better and having fun and remember that even if you lose you win in PvP.  It is not like PvE where if you are bad you can make it impossible to do it, PvP is much more inclusive content and you being bad has a much smaller impact when looking on the larger scale of things.

There are others ways it is more inclusive as well.  Not just that you still can gather up a fair deal of honor when losing so you can still get gear but you can over power content.   While in PvE you are limited by gear and a maximum number of members you can bring into the content you are not limited in PvP.  If there are a group of people wiping out crossroads with 10 you are not limited to just 10, if you wanted to you could go there with 20 or 40 or even 100 people. 

You might not be able to overpower PvE content, but you can overpower PvP content.  The only limit to PvP is how many people you can get that are interested in joining in on the fun.  That is another way it is more inclusive.  Someone will not bring that 8K DPS to a heroic DS run because they would be useless, but they would bring them to PvP because enough of those 8K people can make up for the fact they are only 8K people. See, much more inclusive.

So looking at the three things that make PvP, world PvP that is, so great it makes me wonder, is it possible to somehow make PvE have some of the aspects of what makes PvP so great?

Either way, get out there and enjoy some of that new world PvP while it lasts.  Come September 25th you won't likely be seeing it again as vibrant as it is at this very moment.  You don't need to be good either because it doesn't matter.  World PvP in large groups is about fun, not about who is best.  PvP saves the who is best for the arena, but that is another story all together.

Happy hunting.