Since release, I’ve played on what many refer to as a “carebear” server, and that’s the way I liked it. Sure, I’ve made alts on PvP servers before to see what all the fuss was about, and generally enjoyed the experience. But, none of these alts made it past level 30, as so the experience was extremely limited at best. Now I find myself uprooted from Medivh, my carebear home, and replanted on Ner’zhul–a PvP server on the infamous BG9.
Let me give you a small taste of what questing has been like for me here, with a foray into “Live Blogging”. When I decided to begin this experiment, I’d already been questing in Grizzly Hills for an hour or so and had been ganked, twice, by the same troll shaman while I was minding my own business killing wolves for a quest. (Them or Us!, if you’re wondering.)
Now, let’s see where we go from here, shall we? (Times are local–EST–rather than server time, which is PST.)
11:39pm – Head out from Amberpine Lodge to do the follow-up quest, Eagle Eyes
11:41pm – Started killing eagles. One horde sighting, wasn’t ganked. Yay! The eagles are kind of a pain in the ass to find though, eh? (Especially since my Tracking appears to be busticated.)
11:42pm – Horde lock ran by. Not ganked. Yay! Still looking for eagles…
11:44pm – Finally found my third eagle. Two to go… /sigh
11:45pm – Oooh! An herb!….. Can’t pick it. (Rant for another time.) /sigh Two horde run by, and leave me be. Looks like maybe that one shammy was just a jerk? We’ll see.
11:50pm – Eagle Eyes done, headed back to Amberpine. Wasn’t ganked! Yay!
11:51pm – Eagle quest turned in. Heading out to do Take Their Rear!
11:55pm – Still killing bears. No horde in sight so far, just other allies. Of course once I decide to blog about it, I’m left alone. =/
Side note: getting annoyed that my cat’s Prowl keeps reactivating itself without my say-so.
11:58pm – Ran across a Horde Druid in a guild called “We Punt Gnomes”
12:00am – Still pondering whether I should buy the Dalaran bear mount, or save up for my epic flyer finally…. (Need more bears to kill, getting pwned by ADD.)
12:04am – Sometimes I love internet radio. “Everyday I’m hustlin’, everyday I’m hustlin’!” /headbop
Wtf is up with pets running for miles after being sent after a mob? That’s seriously irritating.
12:07am – Kill Shot isn’t quite as impressive when you’ve got AotV up constantly to prevent downtime while questing…
Still no gankage. If I had known “live blogging” would prevent gankage, I’d have done this hours ago. (Poor you!)
12:08am – Last bear butt looted, heading back to Amberpine.
12:10am – Flying to the Encampment to do the mustang quest. 16% of the way to 74. If quests in Grizzly Hills keep going this quickly, maybe I’ll ding again tonight.
12:13am – Looting carrots. Weeeeee… got 5. Now where the hell are the horses?!
12:14am – Found one. Dangle carrot… here, horsey horsey horsey! Weeeeeeeeeee!! 
12:17am – I really like the neat action bar switches they implemented when you mount some weird quest mob and such. That’s really cool, eh?
12:19am – Am I seriously going to post this? I shouldn’t. But will I? Probably. I feel kinda bad for anyone who’ll actually read this mess. Would’ve been much better if the original plan worked out, and I kept getting ganked… Way to disprove my point, jerks! /sigh
12:22am – Done with the horsies. No horde sightings.
12:23am – Have Close the Deal sitting in my log waiting to get turned in. Might as well do that… (Should’ve done that before heading to the Encampment. D’oh!)
12:28am – Headed to Silverbrook for An Exercise in Diplomacy
12:35am – Wtf? No flight path at Silverbrook? Laaaaaaaaaaaame!
20% to 74. Getting lazy… may need a break for a bit. Food would be good…
12:36am – I give up on “live blogging”. The horde totally ruined what fun I could’ve gleaned from getting repeatedly ganked while questing. I blame them.
If you actually read this, I pity you. You deserve a cookie.
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The notion that you will always get ganked by Horde while questing in a PvP server is overblown out of proportion. I’ve only been ganked twice in Howling Fjord, and I’ve already gone through 90% of the Alliance quests. When I was in Gjalerbron, there were probably 5 Horde to 1 Alliance questing. I wasn’t ganked. You don’t touch them; they won’t touch you. It’s mutual.
It’s interesting to notice though that Horde seemed to travel and quest in packs more often than Alliance.
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I’ve already been ganked my fair share. Enough to actually irritate me (which, for the most part, I’m patient with it since it’s expected). Probably at least half a dozen times for each zone I’ve quested in, each day.
It just particularly bugs me when I get ganked while obviously questing, alone, minding my own business. If I were somewhere I shouldn’t be, or if I were stirring up trouble, that would be one thing.
I actually had a warrior corpse camp me a couple times while questing near Fizzcrank the other day. A guildie showed up to help out, though, which was nice.
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When you wait for something to happen, it doesn’t happen. Isn’t that a variant of Murphy’s Law?
There is no “fair” open world PvP … very few people will attack you, when they have a fair chance of losing the fight – of course sometimes they misjudge. So when there is PvP it is mostly ganking. I can live with that because the “runs by and plays nice” or “helps me” or “saves my butt” makes up for the few people who take the free honor kill. And that “Yay” up there when he didn’t kill you is the reason I prefer playing on PvP even though I always loose PvP fights
When I am being killed repeatedly by the same person or even being corpse-camped (hasn’t happened for a long long time) that’s when I get really mad. But that behaviour is rarer on our PvP server than killing quest givers or griefing the opposing faction in other ways was on my former PvE server.
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Geez, I think I should start liveblogging myself to actually be able to mind my own business.
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“12:07am – Kill Shot isn’t quite as impressive when you’ve got AotV up constantly to prevent downtime while questing…”
I LOVED this ^^
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You want to get ganked? Come to Twisting Nether, or better yet, The Venture Co. The Horde pretty much own those servers.
Nice to know that you didn’t get it too bad tho.
Now where’s my cookie?
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I play horde on tichondrious, and I can see in wotlk people are more focused on leveling up and not interested in pvping. An unspoken truce is happening right now.
But I love pvp, its the main reason I play the game and if an alliance is fighting the same quest mobs I am, well sometimes I get in a fun mood and decide to pvp then
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I play Horde on Gorgonnash and was being repeatedly ganked by the same 3 pallies while doing the Thor Modan quests and others in that area Sunday night. My anal retentiveness and programmers sense of order doesn’t allow me to move, I know, it’s a curse. Anyway last night I was ganked once by 3 alliance, yay. Funniest thing that happened was in Zul’Drak, ran mounted past 3 alliance who attacked me but I stayed mounted and kept running as they chased, realized two had given up early and only the shammy was still chasing so I obliged his deathwish, brought a smile to my face.
I don’t mind being ganked as it’s a PVP server. What I find annoying are the ones who camp, the ones who kill you at half or less health after watching you fight 4 mobs or the ones that attack as they leave the zone, giving you no chance of fair retaliation later.
Gorg has a high alliance population, around 65% I’ve been told (I will now be shown the error of my ways somehow I’m sure but I don’t know how to look that up), always fun to be the only horde in neutral quest hubs. Die, rez next to quest giver, ninja quest hand in, die, rez next to quest giver, ninja receive next quest, lol.
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I like your idea of Live Blogging while you play. It gives a nice insight into how you play. I may have to start doing it myself. Any suggestions on the best way to go about it?
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@Yashima– Yeah, that’s pretty much how it goes. I think I may do “live blogging” more frequently just to see if it continues to hold the gankers at bay. Now, whether I actually post any more will depend largely on how interesting I think my adventures really are, lol.
I actually don’t mind being on a PvP most of the time. I’m fairly patient, but my patience does eventually run out, and then I get really mad. When the troll kept ganking me while doing that quest, I believe my exact words in guild chat were:
Me: ffs!
Me: I hate PvP servers!
Me: “Good luck getting any quests done, fucker!” Servers. Mmmmmmm <3
Heh.
@Gwaendar-- It was actually fun to do, although it did slow down questing quite a bit. And it made me realize that my system for looking up quest info probably wasn't the most efficient, lol. (I just hop on WoWHead on my second monitor to look things up.)
@Tsilluver-- Lol. I actually don't mind it so much, since 1k damage is usually enough to finish off the mob I'm on, and AotV is a must while questing (and I'm way to lazy to swap back and forth between that and Hawk just for questing), but it's a damn sight less impressive than seeing a 2k shot go off.
@Dharion-- I don’t want to get ganked!
@Will– That does appear to be the case most of the time on Ner’zhul, but there’s still a decent amount of jerks and campers running around. Enough that I would notice, and get disgruntled, lol.
@Mintaka– I’m not sure what the ally:horde ratio is on Ner’zhul. Seems fairly equal, from what I’ve seen. I have noticed that horde seems to travel in packs a lot more frequently, though. I don’t think I’ve seen a solitary horde player out questing yet, but have seen several lonely allies running around (like me).
@Santyn– I was flying by the seat of my pants, lol.
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There is usually an uneasy truce on PvP servers (Mannoroth and Ragnaros).
The worst I’ve had is one-shot gankers, they kill you when you are weak, but run out as soon as they can.
What I do like about PvP servers is that I can take revenge on jerks (hint: don’t you ever take Saragosa from a priest. Like ever.)
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Cookie, please?
Still don’t think I could take a pvp server…I don’t mind the game screwing me over (WHY is the last item in a collection quest the one that takes as long to get as the first n items combined??), but I hate it when other people interfere with my fun.
Still, I look forward to reading more of your adventures.
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I’m the opposite I went from PVP server to a “carebear” server. I only went because a blog buddy was on the server.I still see ganking going on on the “carebear” server. I’ve unknowingly buffed Horde that were in fights or coming from BG’s and I got ganked repeatedly.
Playing on pvp server I was repeatedly ganked as a lowbie Ally player. Howeveer I always remembered the tne names of my gankees (is that a word) and If I happened upon them when I was a higher level well they were going to get camped for a while.
I love pvp, but I save it for the BG’s. I’ll leave the other faction alone unless they attack me first. If you aren’t ridiculously higher than I in level well then it’s on…
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That would be ganker. I was the gankee.
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@Kes–
Actually, it’s not so bad. Guildies are always willing to come counter-gank for me, which makes it much more tolerable. Our warrior, in particular, is a godsend in that regard. I was getting ganked by a pack of 77-80s earlier this evening, and he came to my rescue. It was fun watching him go at it while I waited on my rez timers, lol.
@Gaming Diva– Ganking is much more common on carebear servers, actually, than PvP servers. By that I mean, on PvP servers you could be flagged and not get ganked. On PvE servers, if you’re flagged you will get ganked. I chalk it up to the novelty of seeing someone actually flagged for a change.
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I didn’t think you wanted to get ganked….:P
My comment was more a…hmmm…commentary on the state of affairs on 2 RPPVP servers I’ve played on.
and YAY! for cookies!!!!
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