I'm not sure if quite enough significance is being given to the truly casual playerbase in this thread. While some irritation and time lost is not a big deal to the average player on these boards, who have end-game goals and such, there's still a very substantial portion of the population who haven't even hit max level (and yes, people do still start playing WoW who have never played it before). Ganking is a very important to these people, and it may reflect a serious break in their WoW adventures, for example if they plan to log in for an hour and then have a good chunk of that be spent running back to their corpse.

Even if it's not necessarily rational, these events are significant to the truly casual player. Who make up a lot of Blizzard's revenue. I have five 70's and even more 60's, so I've endured my fair share of it and for the most part I consider it a non-issue, but it's definitely not a non-issue for these players. To me it's just a small overhead on leveling efficiency. But for players who, I guess, still see the magic and wonder in the leveling process, the idea of people getting a free ride on a PvE server will be significant, and will be crying on forums, and will constitute the vocal population that Blizzard has to answer to. Again, a population that is not necessarily rational about the time lost, because they view the leveling process as the game that they're paying for, not as a time sink / speed bump like the hardcore crowd does.

And it will almost certainly cause a statistically significant number of players to choose to level on PvE servers to avoid being ganked, knowing that they have the option to transfer off.

Personally, I think the idea of a one-way transfer with no recourse is pretty abhorrent, but again, it's not an aspect of the game that I care enough to complain about. But plenty of people do care enough to complain about the great injustice that they'll surely feel if PvE to PvP servers are opened. It's a minor enough change to the fabric of the game that I'm sure the Blizzard developers don't care much either way; the real question is whether they feel strongly enough to run damage control on people who think it's the end of the world.

Interesting arguments here. A small anecdote to help things along.

I orginally rolled on a PvE server in Asherons Call, it was fun, but ultimately not satisfying so I rerolled on Darktide. In case you don't know, PvP in Asherons Call was TRUE PvP. You could kill anyone, any time, even if they were on your "side" or in your guild. It was by far the most fun I have had in any mmorpg.
You don't grief your own faction during quests when they can kill and corpse camp you in revenge. How often has someone from your own "side" come up and ninja'd that herb/mine/quest mob from you? You have a lot more respect for every player on the server when disrespect in any form could bring down a kill-on-sight judgement on your head.

You may call it "griefing by lowlife kids" but in a mature PvP environment the immature kids really don't last long at all before leaving a server with strong guilds and guild alliances that will put them on k-o-s lists for childish acts.

Unfortunately with the advent of instanced battlegrounds on top of instanced pve even the limited world PvP the that was available is effectively dead - a huge mistake in my opinion. World PvP is player-generated content. Ask any software developer how valuable that is - it's something that Blizzard have lost with battlegrounds. In AC there were running battles for the best world resources such as guild halls, instances, mobs with high loot value etc with the strongest aliiances holding those areas for long periods.

As to why the PvP servers seem to have a deeper PvE talent pool - there could be many reasons. It's been said many times that PvP builds situational awareness in players - something thats very hard to teach with predictable mob AI - but maybe it's not even as deep as this. Maybe the sort of person who is prepared for a PvP environment is just more likely to be an experienced mmorpg player already or just maybe that "necessity is the mother of invention" - the only edge you can get on a competitive PvP server is better gear, that gives you a big incentive to excel at PvE also.

I really hope blizzard sees this thread, this is probably the most civil dicussion about it ive seen. Most threads turn into shit storms from the get go. I have numerous 70s on PvE servers collecting dust until the end of time, Now I am releveling those characters on a PvP and its just more frustrating since I have some real collectibles on those characters. Ive had alot of friends quit outright because they were bored of the guild selection on PvE. Blizzard is probably losing a small amount of costumers over time because of this because who wants to regrind all the way up to 70, grind those factions, grind the instances to get caught up to your character on PvE. Blizzard seems to give costumers what they want, they gave them faster leveling, more instances, more gear. With the faster leveling why does it matter anymore? Im still holding out for blizzard to let us transfer. On the other hand, high pop servers like Mal'ganis could get a huge flood of PvE players and completely ruin the game for the long time players on PvP.

No offense or anything, but you're horrible at drawing conclusions. I think most of the people who enjoy PvP would say that world PvP is the best PvP. Battlegrounds are contrived, Arenas are okay, but you can still be mismatched with no hope of survival thanks to rerolls. Pretty much everyone has a story about "ganking gone wrong" though.

The fact that world PvP has died off in no way supports your claim. All it means is that it's impossible to advance through that avenue anymore. I'm never going to be able to save up 15,000 honor, let alone 40 marks doing world PvP, so people don't do it. Shortly after the honor system was implemented and before BG's was the best time in the game for PvP, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that disagreed with that.

Hundreds?

Lets assume you are good enough at world of warcraft to be in an Illidan-killing guild but are horde-PVE. There are only 53 horde guilds in the US which have killed Illidan, lets say 25% of them are on PVE servers, which leaves 13 guilds to pick from. A far cry from hundreds; this is also assuming every one of those 13 is recruiting, let alone recruiting your class. (Please make sure you pay attention to the first sentence of this paragraph when you go to reply.)

Hrm. I actually like world PvP. It makes me a stronger, more aware player through required vigilance. While I probably wouldn't reroll PvP if the situation were reversed (If PvP servers had the lower raiding population) it would be because I enjoy the raiding game and consider it a big part of why I continue to play WoW. The fact that I get world PvP on top of more options for PvE makes my experience much more rounded and enjoyable over all.

That said.

PvP servers aren't for everyone. When I first started player- WoW was my first MMO and my first serious computer game. When people explained that people would kill me and gank me repeatedly if I rolled on a PvP server I was pretty sure that that would suck and that I would NOT have any fun at all with people ganking me. Luckily, my friends rolled on a PvE-RP server so I never even had to worry about it.

People change, situations change. I don't care for RP. Very hardcore full time RPers in WoW irritate the heck out of me if I'm forced to play with them. By the time I'd gotten my first character to 50, I knew I wanted off my RP server and onto a server where I could find a nice stable guild- maybe with some raiding. At the time, there were no transfers- so I rerolled. I went to a plain PvE server. It was much better and my home for 2 years.

During those 2 years I went from my first Stratholme run (Very Serious Business.) to an officer in a 6 day a week raiding guild in late Naxx to a rather disillusioned ex-officer trying to find the "fun" I'd somehow misplaced in the game.

It was VERY nice to be able (months down the road when they finally opened) to transfer that first level 50 RP-PVE character to my new "home" and keep that initial work I'd put into her without the baggage associated with being on a RP server (where I wasn't happy with the ruleset and all my friends were no longer playing.)

I can only imagine how nice it would be to transfer those characters to a PvP server. 2 70's with full reputations and SSC level gear. My mage is a couple of days away from a Netherwing mount. They're both 375 tailors.

If I had that option- I probably wouldn't have rerolled at all! I'd have found a new server (PvP with some nice raiding guilds) that suited me more than my old one instead of mothballing everything. I probably would have stayed alliance- not because they're somehow better- but because I already had everything I needed alliance side.

Instead I've rerolled horde, and am only slowly working my way back up to where I was. It'll probably be a year or more before I have the depth of bank alts- the stores of gems and herbs and pots- the two 375 tailors, epic flying mount, reputations to revered/exalted... it's daunting to even *think* about how far I have to go to break even with my alliance PvE characters.

Being able to take all of that with you to a new home is a strong thing. It's why transfers are so widely used. It's why people *want* PvE-> PvP.

It's easier, by far, to walk away from the game entirely than to dedicate the time necessary to get a new character back to raiding level starting with 0g and not even a linen bag.

Heh. Rolling a pvp server to begin with is what kept me in the game. A lot of our community and interaction on our server was made through world pvp. Whether its ganking in redridge, the roaming groups of STV, or the bloody fields of Hillsbard people, random people grouped with each other and enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't recognize a single alliance name if world pvp didn't exist.

I'm not sure why a lot of people here had an anti-pvp disposition assuming people were childish on those servers. Is competition really considered immature?

I don't think there is anyone with a real argument against opening this barrier up though.

Having access to the other 25% is NOT as good, especially when you're horde and that number is even further reduced. The community of horde PvE guilds in BT is so small I could practically rattle off all the guilds on that list by memory.

This, if anything, is the only real reason I can imagine being the cause of current policies. How true is this though? Is your average joe gamer even aware of that there is such a thing as server transfers? I honestly don't know. From a financial stand point, the amount of people driven to quit the game would have to be quite high to make it a bad deal for Blizzard.

If this is the case and a larger portion of the player base would chose to play on PvP servers, then the number of PvP/PvE servers would need to be re-balanced. If they open the flood gates, and after a month 70% of players are on PvP servers, shouldn't Blizzard respond by merging/opening/closing servers until 70% are PvP? Shouldn't the balance of server rule sets reflect the desirability of each rule set among the players?

EDIT: To reiterate what many others have mentioned, I think a fair amount of people underestimate the differences in leveling (and playing at 70 for that matter) between high and low population servers. In my experience, these differences can be as significant as the PvP/PvE distinction.

3 lvl 70 PvE (druid, rogue, mage), 1 x lvl 65 PvP (hunter)

The 65 had the fastest to 60 of all my toons. (This thread is very similar to one I started in the BB about PvP, which is rather fascinating).

As for PvP players on PvP servers, that's just so wrong. I've come across some very good PvPers (hello 62 Rogue) and some absolutely shitful (68 warlock tried to gank me 3 times and I killed them each time)

I'm a long way from good at PvP. I play with an Oceanic ping (500+) which already puts me at a disadvantage. I'm a carebear at heart (I can't see the reason to annoy somebody who's going about their own business).

I can very confidently state that PvE and PvP servers are exactly the same in all respects for playing the levelling and raiding game.

I have spent more time running back to the Twin Emps room than I could possibly have ever lost due to corpse camping and or player deaths in PvP.

edit: When I've been ganked and camped - it's never been more than 2-3 corpse runs before I could find a bored 70 in /1 or using /who who was willing to come help out. It's an MMO - use your social skills.