1up posted an article yesterday titled “How Pro Gaming Will Change World of Warcraft” that, frankly, I find pretty ridiculous:

On March 18, both Team Pandemic and CheckSix announced they each had signed deals to sponsor a WoW Arena team. They sponsors plucked the top two teams from the Bloodlust Battlegroup. “Bloodlust is home to many competitive PvP guilds both from past games and WoW itself (Nurfed, Vicious Cycle, Eminence, etc.),” said Joseph Romano, the leader of Power Trip. “It [the sponsorship] is only going to attract more teams to come to the cluster.”

The article raises a couple of interesting points about the differences between sponsoring a WoW team vs. other games, but overall the potential impact of sponsored Arena teams seems way over played to me. Also, you’ve got to chuckle at the ridiculousness of gems like this:

Ladies and gentlemen, WoW is no longer just a game or a social phenomenon — WoW is serious business.

So, the biggest MMO in history didn’t amount to anything until a couple of low-rent e-sports outfits decided to get involved? I have a feeling that Blizzard, who’s raking in $15 a month from 8.5 million people regardless of what Team Pandemic or CheckSix do, would beg to differ.

I had to sit through (an admittedly brief) download just for that? I have enough problems with patch downloaders and patches themselves eating up drive space without them releasing patches for bugs one at a time.

Pre-patch, anytime I had an extra half hour or so I’d jump in and run AB or AV. I was saving up honor points for items I ended up replacing seconds after jumping through the portal but after spending a few days back in the XP grind I was itching for more PvP. I play horde, so no idea what the Alliance counterpart to this is, but I quickly found that redoable quest, Hellfire Fortifications where you are charged with taking control of the Overlook, Stadium, and Broken Hill. There always seems to be a group of 3-4 people doing this and in an hour yesterday I’d racked up over 30 Marks of Thrallmar for the caps and kills. Now I’m kind of obsessed and jumping in any chance I get. Anyone else taking advantage of the new world PvP options?

All across the Outalnds, Horde and Alliance are passing each other by without slaughter and without bloodshed. An uneasy truce rules the land. Everyone is so excited to be questing and exploring, to be getting new gear and new skills that the petty squabbles of the War have been set aside. The Burning Legion is here, and they are enemies to us all.

The Truce, however, is fragile. A stray multi-shot or AoE is all it takes to turn a questing zone into a riot. Forge Camp Mageddon last night exploded after an Alliance warrior (I’m looking at you, Odeon) got tired of competing with the noble Horde for mobs and started ganking. The Horde fought back, more Alliance jumped in to defend and soon the Truce was a shadow of a memory and Odeon lay dead by my hand. Twice.

I encountered the same thing at Zeth’Gor. Too many people in too small a place. Tensions ran high and erupted and player killed player for hours on end. I haven’t seen much PvP in the tower objectives yet, but I have seen a lot in the dense quest zones. The Truce wears ever more thin in the Hellfire Peninsula. There were wide reports of rogues ganking lone travellers, druids appearing from nowhere and ruining a pull. Be careful out there and keep a sharp eye, this Truce cannot hold.

With High Warlord gear suddenly attainable for anyone who wants to grind the 30,000 points, I’m back on the honor grind again. God, it’s so appealing not to have to consider leaving my wife and cat and head out to AV 16 hours a day 7 days a week just to get ahold of a spellblade. Imagine my amusement when I am in an AV and see this:

How much would that suck? To pop into the AV as they lose both towers AND the Aid Station?

Ouch.

Oh, yeah. We lost.

Days before Patch 2.0 which, amongst other things, will do away with our honor system and as such with DK penalties, it was bound to be a hot few days of Alliance and Horde alike griefing Civilians. Well, Alliance. And not for lack of trying, I assure you.

We’re not quite sure on channel #ktwow on freenode (irc:irc.freenode.net/#ktwow) why it is, but both sides agree it’s either another remainder of Horde world planning as an afterthought or yet another Blizzard bias. The problem, you see, is that Horde can’t do squat in Alliance starter areas, whereas Alliance can… well… obliterate most of the lowbie zones.

Here’s some of the obvious ones:

- Civilians and quest givers in Alliance starter areas are usually unattackable. That means “you can not attack this target”. Civilians and quest givers in Horde areas are usually not protected (there is ONE civilian in Sen’Jin Village who is, and she has no relevance to the game),

- Sentinels and Mountaineers can see through stealth. Deathguards and Grunts can not. This means I could sneak my 46 rogue (with no points in MoD) into the Valley of Trials and Deathknell without any problems. My 60 Druid with +stealth enchant to cloak, +stealth on boots (Nightscape Boots) and 5 points in Feral Instinct did not make it into Coldridge Valley or Shadowglen, the NE starter area. When I made it in, after killing the guards, I was picked and attacked by every Sentinel or Mountaineer, even when stealthed and far off.

- Speaking of Sentinels and Mountaineers. I had little problems outrunning Grunts and Deathguards. When I attacked a Civilian, one or two would spawn, I could sprint or simply run, shake them, restealth and return. Sentinels and Mountaineers (as well as the South Shore guards) move at about 130% speed and have intercepts. Spawns are usually in the four to six range, as well.

With 2.0 and the removal of DK penalties the last of the reasons not to grief lowbie areas has been removed. While I never was and never will be a fan of the DK system, it stands to see how Blizzard will react - either by making all lowbie quest givers unattackable as the Alliance ones already are, or by making them all easily killed and evening out the imbalances in protection to allow Horde to retaliate in kind.

The more I level on this PvP server, the more time I spend in contested areas. To me, contested zones are what it’s all about, and I absolutely love questing in places like Tanaris. When we first got to Tanaris, our general plan was to leave other people questing alone unless provoked, we’re all just trying to level right? We even helped a Dwarf hunter in Lost Rigger Cover when he pulled half the map with Andre Firebeard — of course, when he didn’t even bother to say thanks, we killed him. Plz, have some manners.

We quickly realized that while Horde seemed to be trying for a live and let live approach (and we outnumber Alliance by a small margin on my server), every time we turned around there was someone in General chat being camped somewhere by 3 Alliance with a few levels on them. So, with a few general exceptions most people get killed on sight, no questions asked. This keeps us fairly safe. Granted, I have a shadow priest attached to my hip at all times, but that doesn’t mean we don’t find ourselves in sticky situations — but these situations are almost always a result of being ganked while fighting something else, and so we get our revenge as best we can. The two of us have been known to ride around a map for an hour mashing a /target macro to find someone who ganked us, and so far we’ve managed to find all but one or two eventually (and usually beating up on someone else).

I find it interesting how truly AWFUL most of the Alliance are that gank us and run away. When we catch back up with them, they’re absolutely horrible PvPers and it wouldn’t even be fun killing them if it wasn’t for revenge. Most of them don’t even want to fight a fair fight, which leaves us chasing after them, spamming SW:P hoping for a blackout proc or trying to get just close enough to dismount and finish a polymorph cast.

Last night we were on the final leg of the Tanaris mechanical chicken escort quest (dude, I would NEVER kill anyone doing an escort quest, and I mean that) and an Alliance priest waited until the last set of mobs spawned, and killed us while four or five guys wailed on us. High class, amirite? So we race back to our bodies, and of course he’s gone. I ask in General for his location, and he’s back in Gadget.

Everyone knows you can’t kill anyone in Gadget without the Bruisers tearing you a new one, but if you’re willing to eat the death you can certainly get your revenge. Which is exactly what we did — came back to find this priest inside the inn with an AFK tag over his head, planned out as much burst damage as we could before we got owned by the Bruisers, and got our revenge. So, so worth it.

I’m interested in hearing more from people on PvP servers — etiquette, stories, the lengths you’ll go to in order to kill that one special person. The closer I get to 60, the more I realize that levelling to 60 on a PvE server has not in any way prepared me for levelling on this one — it’s a whole new game.

There I was, ripping it up in Alterac Valley like it was my job. We were marching on Stormpike Graveyard when I got railed by a monster crit. Dead as a doornail. Except, this was that very special kind of dead that doesn’t let me resurrect. That’s right, someone managed to kill me deader than dead. It seems to happen to me daily in AV, like some form of cruel karmic revenge for some imagined slight against the Alliance.

Sadly, no matter what I do, I just can’t rez. There’s no point in putting in a GM ticket since even the longest AV battle in Eitrigg is shorter than the pitiful response times for GM tickets. I walk back to my corpse, hanging out by my body, looking at the “Resurrect now?” dialog like a cruel joke at my expense. Sitting in game, I earn rep for the kills, but no HKs. /afk’ing out and I’m stuck with a 15 minute deserter buff that even a GM ticket won’t cure.

This sucks, Blizz, fix this, soon.

The folks over at Not Addicted have written up what might be the best PvP primer in the history of WoW. Everything you need to know is covered, and since it’s written from the perspective of a lvl 1 Orc on his first day in Winterspring, it’s not too hard to follow.

Funny XR PvP story to share,

(first line sung to the Brady Bunch theme)

Here’s a story…. About a lvl 43 Alliance hunter……… Who ventured to the XR with his lvl 60 friends.

As his friends and I and a few other Horde were fighting and dying he made sure to taunt, spit on and laugh at all us Horde, UNFLAGGED of course. After an hour or so and in between battles he must have decided that he needed to explore XR’s interior. He cast “eyes of the beast” on his pet and sent him off to XR’s front gate. DOH!, guess he didn’t realize that when his pet attacks a guard THEY BOTH FLAG.

Intercept, whirlwind and a mortal strike later he wasn’t laughing, spitting, pointing or living. And, just to make sure we all know what type of loser we were dealing with…… The little Alliance sh*t didn’t even show up to claim his body.

lmao, pwned, lrn2shtUrFaceidEothntrloZr