Improving WoW's PvP

There are two kinds of people PvPing.

There are those for whom PvP is a means to an end, and there are those for whom PvP is a reward in itself. Don't believe the second kind exists? Just take a look at this screenshot from Saylah's blog.


For the second group of people, you don't need to do anything. As you can see from the above pic, and as the old Tarren Mill vs. Southshore grudge matches of yesteryear attested to, people who PvP for PvP's sake will always find a way to slake their thirst for combat. It goes without saying (you know, we say that, but then we still always say what we're going to say anyway) if you add PvP and provide rewards to people who participate, you'll be satisfying both types of PvPers in one hit. Economy of motion FTW.

WoW started off with a great PvE game that allowed for world PvP if you wanted to do that sort of thing, but the initial focus was more on PvE. Then Blizzard realized that people were PvPing all on their own, and doing so with some frequency, and the Battlegrounds were introduced. Way back when, Alterac Valley was a real knock 'em down, grind it out, slug fest. Battles could last for hours, or longer. There are some legendary AV battles that lasted for days where the only people that got rewarded were those playing at the very end when one of the Generals was killed.

Lately PvP has become all about the ZOMG! EPIX! what with Blizzard feeling compelled to provide some sort of reward for people who PvP, which is not necessarily a bad thing. If people are playing your game and over time they can earn a reward, but that reward is just one part of a 6-piece set, most people will keep playing and try to earn all 6 pieces. When people have to pay to play your game it makes sense to keep them happy while taking their money, because happy players stick around longer, which means more money for you. But enough about that, on with the "improving PvP" bit.

So how do we improve PvP? It's simple. We make PvP death mean something. Alterac Valley is taking a step in the right direction with its "reinforcements" system. You win by destroying the other team's towers and by killing the other players. Funny that. You win a PvP match by killing the other team more than they kill you. It makes sense that if getting killed brings your team one step closer to losing, that you should do everything you can to avoid dying, right? And yet...many players in AV fail to grasp this simple concept. They rush headlong into battle and get burned down by 5 or more players, then they Rez at the GY, rush straight back into battle and get killed straight away again. Their death means nothing to them, in fact they think they're helping, but in reality each death brings their team one step closer to losing. So how can we change this? How can we make their death mean something more? How can we get players to support each other? How can we get players to buff and heal each other and do their best to prevent each other getting killed?

Answer: Consecutively longer death penalties.

Die once and you spend 5 seconds waiting to Rez.
Die a second time, wait 10 seconds to Rez.
Die three times, wait 15 seconds, and so on.

I can see a few raised eyebrows and a few people going "Ok, he's lost it. I thought the Permadeath idea was crazy but now he's really lost it."

Stick with me on this. You've read this far; what do you have to lose?

Obviously this is not going to help you if you're the one that keeps on dying. That's not how we're improving PvP. The consecutively longer death penalty is going to hurt your team for letting you die. Ok, that's a bit harsh. Your death might have been because you were the idiot who single-handedly attacked 5 opponents, then again, you might have just got Ambushed by a very deadly little Rogue. Mwah hah ha! Um...where was I?

Unfortunately...my idea relies on the average PvPer being intelligent enough to learn from their mistakes. And if you've done much PvP (at least WoW PvP) I'm sure you're nodding your head here. I'm sure you've seen it all, just as I have. My Rogue has done a lot of AV, but one of the most memorable was actually an AV we lost.

When our Offense smashed themselves against a strong Horde defense, a small group of us held on at Iceblood Graveyard while everyone else was forced to Rez back at Stormpike. While they were unable to break through the Horde offense and join up with us, they made for a formidable Defense and the Horde were forced to win by attrition, slowly reducing our reinforcements one kill at a time.

Meanwhile, down at Iceblood GY, we were having a hell of a time, much like Saylah did in her 7-hour WSG. We were fighting real people in AV. We were actually PvPing! We had a couple of Healers, some CC, and massive quantities of DPS, both Ranged and Melee. We held IB GY for the entire Turtle, and it took a while for us to finally lose, but we had a blast!

We may not have got much Honor but we did rack up the HKs, but what made the battle so much fun was we stuck together and worked as a team. Our Healers kept healing us and we made sure we killed the Horde before they could kill our Healers. We didn't need consecutively longer death penalties, because in our case, we were PvPing properly. By that I mean we were playing as a team and supporting each other, which is what (I'd like to think) consecutively longer death penalties would force people to do. Because if they don't play as a team and support each other, the whole team will suffer as more and more people stay dead longer and longer, and I think everyone reading this understands what that means.

In case you don't, I'll spell it out for you. The longer you spend dead the less resistance your opponents face, so they kill more of your team mates, meaning even more of you are spending more time waiting to Rez, meaning your opponents are facing even less resistance, meaning they kill even more of you and have an even easier time getting to their objective. So the team that supports each other, stops each other from dying, and kills more of the other team faster, will get more of an advantage the longer they continue to play as a team and support each other.

Tanks will actually have a viable spot in PvP. Being in the front lines they're the ones most DPS will target, but as Tanks, and with Healers backing them up, they're going to prove surprisingly hard to kill. That's when your Ranged DPS, supported by your Melee DPS, starts laying into their Melee DPS who are blindly focused on trying to kill your hopefully indestructible Tanks. Your DPS kills their Melee DPS, your CC takes care of their Tank (assuming they even have one), then you all rush their back lines and destroy their Healers and Ranged DPS. And unless they regroup after Rezzing and come back as a Team, their failure to play as a Team will see them get picked off one-by-one and as has already been explained, at this stage defeat is inevitable.

Consecutively longer death penalties. It's a crazy idea, but just crazy enough to work. Then again, given the way the average PvPer behaves in AV, I sort of doubt it.