Why flagging on a PVE server can make a PVPer QQ

Alternative titles:

• Not flagging doesn’t make you a coward
• PVE server rehabilitation for the PVPer
• Displacement therapy – its okay to admit you feel uncomfortable

..all that’s tongue in-cheek by-the-by ^_^

Read a dammed interesting post from MMOG Nation– it’s a take on what a PVPer will experience if they transfer to PVE and then stay flagged like a PVPer is accustomed to doing.

Must say my own experiences with PVE servers have been somewhat similar, I found the only realistic time to pop the PVP flag was in defense of someone else (heals and the like because I couldn’t just stand there and watch) … and I found that you could expect very little backup from a lot of the same faction toons around you (oh we are too low a level to help etc etc.)

Which when I tried to go back to PVE servers retrospectively was very strange for me because some of my best memories of world PVP are incidences like the time my level 60 hunter and about seven baby hunters flushed a level 70 NE rogue who had been ganking baby toons in xroads (it was like flare city overload), or that one time some griever up at Tarren mill was literally swarmed by horde lowbies and actually died from it.

On PVE servers I have found if you are fool enough to flag … well no one will aid you… because “well son you were fool enough to flag”. The solution is always “drop your flag you idiot” or “don’t attack him/her in the first place”. (You can often spot a new ‘usually-PVEer’ in the starting areas of a PVP realm because they will say things like this over general without realizing what areas the rule actually applies to.)

Heck – I know of cases on a PVE realm where when the rumor gets out that someone is flagged (some lowbie will pipe up over defense or general about an enemy in the area) well the opposing faction literally swoops in all a-dragon-back and on mass … heh to discover some hordie simply fishing unflaged.

And I think that’s part of the key to the difference in attitude about world PVP – on a PVP server if you wander around you are flagged automatically and there is nothing to indicate whether you are trying to cause trouble or not, you’re just going about your business. Now on a PVE server a flagged person can be considered trouble or at least potential trouble … like seeing some stealthed alliance druid sitting on the horde zeppelin, or a group of mounted alliance outside the gates of Orgimmar. A flagged person will also attract unto himself every gank starved griever from the opposing faction in the local area who has gotten wind of the situation (it will be like blood in the water if the sharks are there to smell it) – and no one will do a damn thing to help because people who flag on PVE servers are considered trouble looking for trouble, and a lot of the toons who don’t flag are playing on a PVE server because they are uncomfortable with that sort of thing in the first place.

It becomes a bit of a case of “oh you got mugged? Well why were you walking down that dark alley in the first place? It’s your own fault really”

Which is why I rather prefer PVP servers – aye you still lose a lot if you do get in a fight, aye its bloody annoying to have your questing interrupted by an asshat – but suddenly you are that guy who has been down the dark alley at the wrong time. You’re more likely to help others in the same situation and less likely to blame them for getting into trouble and you can commiserate about being upset by it. Also everyone is involved, if there is a griever in the area it actually affects all the lowbies playing in that area, toons will communicate the danger, they pull together, sometimes guilds are contacted or 70’s in the area party-up and create a kinda old west law-man posse to help out the lowbies … because we have all been there in that alley. It does add some definition to the two fractions – every alliance player you see is potential ‘trouble’.

But hey that can be positive too, I mean any good interaction with the opposing faction takes a lot more trust and means a hell of a lot more to the parties involved. Like the other day I gave a little human an escort through the wetlands on my shaman alt and boy was the little human chuffed – it was cute. And yes I did get killed by some jerk of a lvl 70 paladin once I got closer to the alliance port, but I led him a damn merry chase though the swamps before he got me … and I came away with some interesting ideas about how I could have fled better. Also I have this feeling he missed the guys no emote (or thought it was at me not his shiny pally self) and thought I was harassing the baby lol. So it is hard to be too cut by it all, although I would have liked to deliver the human to the doorstep so to say … I hope the paladin took responsibility.

Heh of course it “means more” because the standard reaction in this situation would have been to bite his head off… much like the pally who hammered me to death further down the road – them be the PVP breaks.(Snort – yes… yes I was in wolf mode … the dog mentality tends to take over a little when I run around as a wolf.)

Now I am not saying there is more in the way of honorable characters or asshats on either PVE or PVP servers – just that the ‘all for one attitude’ that is more likely to develop on PVP servers is rather appealing to me.

There was for example this Roleplay PVE server where I once fell in with this Night Elf group that had set themselves up as the ‘Guards of Astranaar’. They just hung in the area and engaged any hordies who attempted to attack that town (I hear this is common on PVE-RP servers) – of course as such it was a pretty happening area and the characters were rather RP awesome. It is what actually got me into PVP servers and Battlegrounds in the first place, before that I was strictly a PVE player.

And lastly PVP servers give the nutjobs so many targets they don’t know what to do with them all – the pain my friends is shared and disbursed.

EDIT:

Oh looky nother blog that agrees PVE server World PVP is nasty: World PVP on a PVE Server by BGbendax

Oh and heres a couple of posts on PVP server retribution: Oh I’m sorry… were you trying to farm? & I’m a troublemaker by Netra of Curse of Shadows

..actually I have never been sure why people are allowed flag on PVE in the first place … well except for capital city raids .. and the NE guards were a fun crew … hmmm still isn’t that what the battlegrounds are for on PVE realms, the PVP outlet?

~ by Lactic Acid on July 24, 2008.