Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Why I Play on a PvE Server

When asked why I chose to play on a PvE server there are two answers that would seem obvious.  One is that I am not good at PvP and the other is that I do not like PvP.  While there is a grain of truth in both of those statements they are also filled with falsehoods.

While I am not very good at PvP it is because I do not do it often enough to get good at it.  If I had rolled on a PvP server I would have become a better PvPer, that is just simple common logic.  It is also not that I do not like PvP, quite the opposite, I really do enjoy PvP.  I just do not like a perpetual PvP environment.

And that is where the answer for why I play on a PvE server comes from.  It is not because I want to be on a "care bear" server but because I want control.  Control over what I do and when I do it.

If I just want to quest I just want to quest.  I do not want to have to stop for an epic battle with people my own level every few minutes.  I do not want to get camped by higher levels while I wait for my back up to make it to me to even the playing field.  I do not want to log out and switch to another character is there is not someone that can help me.  I just want to quest.  I do not want to take my time out from questing to kill someone else because even if it would be easy to kill them it will slow me down.  When I am out questing I want to quest.  Nothing more, nothing less.

When I have to kill 12 voodoo gnomes and there are a total of 20 in the area with 6 people on the quest it is frustrating enough.  I hate waiting for respawns and then playing a game of who can tag the mobs first.  It is not fun game play or compelling game play it is just annoying.  I am playing to quest and that is what I want to do, I do not want to add more crap on top of an already annoying situation by having to PvP while waiting to finish my quest that I should have been done with already if it weren't for 5 other people here killing my freaking gnomes.

I'll be the first to admit that I do often wish I could just kill the other 5 people there so when those voodoo gnomes respawn I have no competition but in a pros vs cons side by side the pros of being able to kill those 5 people would not outweigh the con of those 5 people being able to kill me.  I just want to get the quest done and move along.

I look at a PvE server as a controlled environment, at least as controlled as you can get in a multi player game.  So when I want to go mining, I go mining.  When I want to go questing, I go questing. When I want to fly from point A to point B I don't have to worry about being slowed down.

The beauty of this is when I want to PvP it is a simple flag switch, queue up, or invasion into an unfriendly zone away.  This is why I play on a PvE server, control.  I control when I PvP, how I PvP, and if I want to PvP at all.

I don't really get offended by the term "care bear" like some people do but I do think that most people that use the term do not understand what being on a PvE server means.  It does not mean you do not want to PvP, it just means that when you are not in the mood for PvP you do not have too.  There is a huge difference.

I've often flown around mining flagged, so if something pops up, it pops up.  Not because I am looking for a fight but because I am not adverse to the idea of one happening.  If I were just in the mood to mine and mine alone I would not let myself be flagged.

I have a habit of getting my priest flagged, kind of because when you heal a flagged person it flags you.  While most people, if they get accidentally flagged, run an hide or hearth to a safe place, or log out, or any other thing they can to get out of the action like take a flight path, when I do get flagged, I go about my business on my priest flagged and just do not care.

It is not because I am looking for a fight but it is because I don't actually like questing on my priest, I don't have a gathering profession, and in truth, I am kind of okay at PvP on my priest.  So if a fight comes I am ready for it. 

But see, that is where what I said earlier holds true.  The only reason I am okay at PvP on my priest is because I leveled my priest through PvP.  She is not good because I want to PvP on her, she is good because she had done it a lot.  Just the same I would be on any of my characters if I leveled them through PvP.

PvP servers take away the choice of game play, that is why I play on a PvE server.  I like choice, I like control, I am not a care bear, I am just a control freak.  Slight difference.

PvE servers are more like, do what you want, when you want to.  And that is why I always choose to be on a PvE server.  I can fight when I want to fight and I can quest when I want to quest.  I do not ever feel forced into doing both at the same time, the control is in my power and I like that.

Why did you choose the server type you play on?

22 comments:

  1. Except for the first week or so of any new content, most "PvP" on a PvP server is of a very lopsided nature that does nothing to improve anyone's skills.

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    1. I do have a few very underplayed characters on PvP servers, so I understand that one.

      Even on a PvE server whenever there is new content there is always a PvP problem with people trying to get people to accidentally flag themselves or letting the spells that accidentally flag people hit them. They do it just for the free and easy kills of expecting people but those people are not real PvPers, they are not looking for a battle, they are looking for an easy win. First sign of you fighting back and they run away.

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  2. One of my servers (currently my horde server) is normal PvE, I ended up there because that's the server the game recommended when I first logged in... didn't know any better, not even sure I was aware of the existence of servers at the time.

    My primary alliance server is RP PvE, not because I RP but because the people I knew in-game personally played there (they don't RP either so I can't say how they ended up there in the first place) so that became my main server.

    My new server is normal PvE as well, went there again because I knew people but it's also a lot more active than my other two servers so I wanted to get some experience on a busy server as well.

    I'm mostly with you but with a bit less PvP tolerance, I mostly just want to play the game how I want to play the game, I don't get joy out of ganking players or disrupting their play so when others do it to me it drives me extra nuts. A PvP server would just add ganking me to the list of annoyances that they can do on a PvE server, too... lately I've had a number of high-level flying toons basically shadow my lowbie while questing. No clue why, all different players, all from different servers... not sure if it's threatening or if they're bored and just standing by to help out if I get in over my head. Sometimes they're my faction, sometimes not. It's weird on a PvE server, I can only imagine how I'd react to an opposite faction player doing that to me on a PvP server. I don't need the grief.

    Even if I was interested in world PvP I can't see playing on a PvP server while leveling... I imagine my keybinds would be completely different for questing and for PvP which would basically mean being optimized for one and significantly sub-optimal for both or going with a hybrid solution and not doing either particularly well. Again, I don't need the grief.

    So, PvE it is. I don't imagine I'll ever have a toon on a PvP server, I just have no interest, it seems like almost all downside based on my playstyle. I used to just log out or hide when I'd get flagged for any reason but lately I haven't been bothering, noticed that on PvE servers most other players aren't looking to be flagged either so they leave me alone which suits me just fine.

    (and of Timeless Island situations where I got flagged and got into a scrap, I'm 1-and-1... won my first one going toe-to-toe with someone and got my ass handed to me on the second one by a hunter who knew what he was doing)

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    1. I've seen a lot of that "shadowing" while leveling characters too. Not sure why they do it, maybe it is some sort of inside game for some people and we are just not in on it.

      I've had a lot of high levels just following me around, not interfering or anything, just following.

      It is weird it it sure beats some of the shadow people I've had to deal with. People grinding mobs you need for a quest and even after you ask politely just to let you kill 5 they still mow them down with AoE because they are 90. Or the one DK that followed me around and every time I approached a mine he landed and took it and laughed at me. I hate those people, but I guess that is how people grief in PvE because that can not camp a level 38 with their 90 like they can on a PvP server.

      Same here, even if I went hard into PvP I do not think I would ever level another character on a PvP server. Too much death, not enough fighting people your own level. I was leveling one on a PvP server once in a blue moon but after cross realm was added I logged in once, took one step out of org, and was camped by max level characters. I logged out and never returned. When I want to level I want to level. I do not want to be killed in one shot over and over by someone 60 levels higher than me.

      I do love world PvP however. Would like to see more of it in game.

      I had one of the accidental attacks on TI not so long ago. Was trying to click the ladder to get on the ship and accidentally clicked a horde shaman. No biggie, I would stop attacking and if he did not hit back all would be fine. But he attacked, and I understand it. I killed him, his three buddies killed me.

      We both release and are at the spawn point. I mount up to ride away and he attacks me. I turn and blow him up. I guess he was a PvPer. I do not get the mindset. I beat you when it was just me against 4 of you and now alone you want to try me one on one? No sense.

      I was prepared to just walk away, it was an accident.

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    2. Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:

      Can't tell you others reasons for shadowing lower levels, but mine is simple. I use it to observe others and to see how they play. I find it very interesting to see others play.

      Of course, being a care bear type, I intervene if the low level needs assistance or at bare minimum provide a rez. So I guess that also counts as a reason to shadow, simply to be of assistance if and when needed.

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    3. I guess I can see that. I've often stopped to help someone I see in need of trouble. Like when I see someone leveling attacking a rare and they look like they are in trouble, horde or alliance, I stop and help them most of the time. Or if I am on someone with a revive I will rez someone that died. I don't really stalk them, but I might observe in passing.

      I've had people follow me through entire zones.

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    4. I've had the shadowing thing happen 3 more times since posting that but in those cases they were all somewhat at my level (high 40s, my toon is low 40s) who were on ground mounts. I've been leveling a hunter skinner entirely via skinning (ie. mob kills for XP) so I'll just attack a mob at range, kill it, skin it, move on to the next mob, etc. Not exactly a spectator sport but I had one guy (opposite faction) hang back in my blind spot for about 15 minutes one time before I ended up running away (ran out of mobs and my mount speed was faster than his...

      The other times were more brief but guys just generally bounced around in my area, not on me (which would have been annoying) but just in my viewing area.

      It's seriously weird. The only "odd" thing in this case is that my toon was killing mobs 6 or 7 levels above him so solidly in the red, it's possible they were curious to see how well I did at it but... do you notice the level of other mobs that are killing mobs near you? I would have thought I pay attention to my environment more than most but I certainly don't pay much attention to that.

      It's also a solid +1 that some sort of in-game ghost mode would likely be a popular addition to the game. :)

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    5. I could see people watching a particularity hard fight, just to see you do it or fail. I would get that a lot when doing a rare and have watched others that pulled a lot just to see how they manage it. But after it is done I move on.

      Sometimes I do it to see if they get in trouble so I can help them.

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  3. I find the "stand in a dead rare so people will click me" pvpers so incredibly obnoxious. It's the one thing that will get me to put down anything I'm doing to come help a friend who had that happen. I'm not good at pvp, but I do outgear 99% of people on my server, so i love beating the crap out of people who do that.

    I'm especially surprised when they do it to me. I mean, I would assume these people are pretty cowardly, and would check their potential my gear before provoking me into a fight.

    My favorite was a guy who was up top where the spawning archereus is. I pull arch, MDing to my pet, he pulls aggro from my pet, dies, runs back and sits there, watching me kill arch, of course waiting until the last few blows to start attacking again (which is fine, I don't mind that at all), then flags himself and stands in arch's body. I can't imagine what he was thinking... you just watched me solo probably the toughest rare on the island, so I've either got pretty good gear, or i'm a decent enough player, either way, why would you want me to click you?

    Anyhow... I despise those cowardly trolls...

    ~Delirium

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    1. That stand on the rare flagged this is HUGE on PvE servers. They are jerks looking for a free and easy kill because they are not very good PvPers to begin with.

      Just hit fetch and let your pet loot it and not even click to loot and it will annoy him even more.

      I had something similar on the island over the bridge. I would farm rep over the bridge where the burden was, do circles there clearing it out.

      The high priest has to be the hardest ones there and was pretty brutal when we first got there before we got lots of SoO gear.

      I was working the kite and beating it down when someone came by, saw me, want back and dragged two more mobs to me and tried to dump aggro on me.

      So now I have the priest and two more of those big guys and manage to down all three with this jerk doing nothing by trying to run them to me to do their ground effects under me. The whole time, he is flagged, hoping I tab to him.

      I downed all three and stood there looking at him. I did not attack and just turned on PvP and waited for him to make his move.

      We stood there staring at each other for what felt like 10 minutes but was probably 10 seconds and he finally took a run at me. I killed him before he reached me.

      What made him think he could beat me after I beat a priest and 2 others while he was doing everything he could to get my killed by a ground effect.

      If I could manage that, while not accidentally tabbing to him, or getting hit by any of that crap, you would think he would get the clue I might know what I am doing.

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    2. That's great! Yeah, the high priests are basically identical to Archiereus. Some of the isle world pvp has been fun, but it's really brought out the trolls.

      I've been playing a lot with MM lately, hoping that even though i'm fairly terrible at pvp I can get the 100 arena win mount this season. And so sometimes I practice with MM on the isle, and god I wish I could see their faces when I trap/silence/scatter them then get a 500k crit on my first Aimed Shot. Throw on some black ash they better pray that my chimera doesn't crit.

      It's good to be a hunter. :-)

      ~Delirium

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    3. It is troll central for the most part. Lots of bad ones there and lots of places for them to get you.

      I tried going back to MM and could not get my grove back with it. Wasn't feeling it for some reason. :( Sad because I used to always love MM.

      You think it is good to be a hunter, try a lock on the island. My lock with 40 item levels+ less than my hunter can do all the mobs my hunter can do, even 2 and 3 at a time, no problem what so ever. Lock pets are way over powered right now. I wish my hunter pet was half as survivable as a lock pet and their pets hold aggro like a champ, better than hunter pets by a mile.

      I really think blizzard needs to step up the pet love for our pets and give it some of the lock pets aggro management and survival.

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  4. I would prefer that PvE servers truly meant PvE, as in no World PvP at all. I don't like the whole A vs H thing at all. We work together so frequently in the lore, yet we can't play together in the game...

    I rarely do PvP. BGs can be fun, but I'd do it more if it didn't require different gear...

    However, there have been some cases lately where I wish I was on a PvP server. Had an especially annoying griefer (troll druid) that kept pulling mobs or Ordos into our group while we were forming up for Ordos. We couldn't kill him since he wasn't flagged. We ended up just doing a sloppy pull with only a partial group and having the rest join us as they rezzed.

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    1. I agree with the doing it more if it did not require different gear. That is a real drawback of PvP, the fact you need to go out of your way to gear for it and that gear is useless for anything else. It makes PvP and its gear unattractive.

      We have lots of that on my server. There are always horde bringing the fire elemental guys to the inn near the court trying to kill everyone in there that is AFK or just logging in. They do not kill him, they drag him there and keep him there. This goes on all day, every day.

      They do that at ordos too. We found a solution however. Get 80 or people people, kill ordos in less than 30 seconds, they never have time to even get the mob up there. Only works on reset day however. Can't get that many as the week goes on.

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  5. I use PVP servers, but only because some of them are very large, and full of people who are into PVP. That's it.

    I don't care about world PVP one bit, I did it more than enough (more than 25k kills *in the world*), and it is not really PVP. With some rare exceptions, world PVP is unbelievably unbalanced (lvl 90 vs lvl 86s on quests, or a stealth team of 5 vs level 90s who try to do achievements or mobs on IoT or TO, or a raid of 40 with 17 healers vs unprepared Stormwind). Also, numbers rule, and that makes world PVP a skilless phasing lagfest at the "high" end. And PVE gear is better for world PVP than PVP gear (even upgraded LFR gear is better than conquest in most cases). *shakes head* World PVP is a complete mess, has been a mess for a long time. No wonder nobody really does it more than cursorily.

    I'd say, by the way, that large PVP servers are not very different from PVE servers, because all large PVP servers have a dominating faction which hugely outnumbers their enemy. Probably because world PVP is what it is.

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    1. Here's one more thing about world PVP and PVE gear. Try killing a healing priest in PVE gear (doesn't even matter if holy or disc). If your gear levels are at all comparable, you are dead even if your skill is much higher. If a priest has, say, 1700 in 2v2 (nothing to write home about, but not a total newbie), you will die even if you are a multi-gladiator, guaranteed. A healing priest can kill anyone, short of another healing priest or a resto druid. I know it first hand because I have a priest myself. I can 1v2, for god's sake! There are plenty of things like that in world PVP.

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    2. ^^ And the point is: how screwed up is it that the most dominating spec that can kill everyone is a healer, not, say, DPS with lots of CC. If it's 2v2 in arenas, I am on a DPS char, and it goes to 1v1 with me vs a healing priest on the other team, that priest is dead. He is so dead, he will just quit the arena by himself most of the time. But in world PVP, it's exactly the reverse. How screwed up is world PVP if it is *a complete opposite* of PVP in arenas in this case? And there are other cases...

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    3. The problem I find with PvP server, more so than PvE servers, is that while the people there might be into PvP they are unbalanced.

      Lets face it, when a server is 98% horde who makes an alliance there? And even if they did they would still have no prayer.

      If PvP servers were balanced I could support the "more people that PvP" there as a selling point. Now it is "more people to back me up as a slaughter people that have no prayer because we already outnumber them 1000 to 1."

      World PvP rocks, when done correctly. We used to have battles in the deeprun tram. All max levels. All going back and forth on the tram, on the platforms, jumping from car to car.

      I could waste hours there never even noticing the time pass it was so much fun. balance? Who cares, as long as it is not lopsided it is fun. If some lower level wanted to join they are collateral damage, they are not part of the battle.

      A 90 swooping down on an 86 and killing them is not world PvP, it is an execution. Anyone that calls that world PvP is not a PvPer.

      That is why I LOVE PvP on my priest. I out gear PvP geared players and I have PvP skills. My gear, my skills, the fact I can heal and DPS at the exact same time, unless you are really a master of the PvP world, I will own you.

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  6. I agree -- I played on PvE servers initially for a few years, then played on a PvP server for all of Burning Crusade...and quickly got tired of many of the issues you talk about.

    I wanted epic world PvP fights and being able to fight over things like mining veins.

    I got tons of ganking (either high levels versus low levels or groups versus individuals) and disruption of stuff like summoning stones at raid time.

    I just got tired of it. I'm fine with PvP in general, but I have no love for stupid PvP.

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    1. That is the key. PvP is fun but wasting time is not.

      Love the battles at the summoning stones while waiting to go in, still do them even on a PvE server, but at least the people doing the summoning are not flagged so it does not get annoying.

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  7. My very first day in WoW I was trying out an undead rogue, and I couldn't turn in any quests for hours because some jerkwad gnome kept killing the quest NPCs.

    This was on a PVE server.

    My friends had rolled PVE so that was where I was going to end up regardless. But even if I had had no friends who were playing, that first night would have cemented in my mind that there are tons of griefers and general creeps playing this game, and I have zero interest in giving them even more opportunities to disrupt my gameplay. As far as I'm concerned quest givers, vendors, and the like should not be targetable, so town and city raids should be about either instigating world PVP or downing enemy faction leaders. The fact that people are allowed to harass players in-game and ruin their play time was a huge misstep on Blizzard's part.

    I personally really enjoy world PVP that's actual PVP. I still fly over to Halaa and do WG, TB, etc. every now and then because people have started coming back to them, and I'm usually up for a city raid or defending against an invading raid. But I have zero interest in getting camped, ganked, and harassed by trolls who have been granted an ability they should never have had - the ability to prevent other people from playing the game on their own terms.

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    1. I agree, quest givers should not be targetable. Not sure why blizzard has not noticed this one yet.

      Sounds like my first experience upon arriving in ashenvale and waiting for hours, over days, to be able to pick up or turn in a quest, on a PvE server.

      I have a feeling that PvE people that do this are so bad at PvP that it is the only sense of accomplishment they can ever get because that is all they can beat. It helps me deal with it because I start to feel bad that their real life must be so miserable if they have to do this to make themselves feel better about themselves.

      I love world PvP too, and not wintergrasp and stuff like that, real open world PvP that just happens and friends call friends and before you know it it is 80 against 80 in the deeprun tram. Now that is awesome.

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