A year long (at minimum, Wrath doesn't look like it'll be out by the year anniversary of TBC) wait for the hard reset is asking a bit much. Plenty of people will do it. I am currently doing it. (In fact- I'm alt tabbed right now while sitting in the LFG queue for Hellfire Ramparts on my new main). That doesn't mean it's a reasonable proposition.

The comparison between Skywall's raiding scene (Bekah, RIP Rebirth) and the raiding opportunities on Mal'Ganis are incredible. There's raiding to be had on PvE servers. good raiding, solid raiding. The opportunities are simply better on PvP servers.

But I didn't HAVE the option to roll on the server type I wanted. It was RP-PvE or PvP. When they finally opened the server type I'd been wanting since the beginning, I had spent a year and change finally getting a warrior to 60. I HAVE already rerolled. I want the option of bringing my warrior to the server type that I wanted to play on from the beginning, but which was not provided to me. And it's not like my server type required some ridiculous new amount of code to introduce. Take PvP server, give RP ruleset, voila! New server type.

A lot of options? For the two or three classes in heavy demand, and if you have your vials, maybe. Otherwise? Good luck. Checked the Guild Recruitment forum lately? Find a single thread by a guild on a PvE server that wants rogues. Just one! They don't even have to be in BT/Hyjal. Hell, they could be working on Prince. Find *one*. Go look, I'll wait.

Other classes aren't in quite such dire straits but they're still in bad shape.

It's pretty close to complete desolation.


As far as the whole 'level playing field' argument for rerolling on a server for a new expansion goes, I'm going to call bullshit on that one. Ignoring the fact that most people didn't replace their naxx gear for quite a while, having a stockpile of gold & consumables along with friends/guildmates makes a huge difference when levelling a new character, and you're not going to have that if you're levelling from scratch on a PvP server when your main and all your alts are on a PvE realm somewhere else. Less gear gap, maybe, but not a level playing field.

It's also still a fairly tremendous timesink that exists for absolutely no rational reason other than some nebulous claim of 'fairness'. There's absolutely no tangible evidence to back up claims that it's 'harder' or 'more challenging' to level on a PvP server, and the anecdotal evidence for it is pretty slim. It's simply a decision Blizzard is unwilling to backtrack on, and for whatever reason people feel good about defending them for it.

There should be some kind of warning when you choose a PVE Server:

"Warning: If you roll on this ruleset you are stuck with this choice forever you cannot transfer to PVP if you discover just how bad it is to be Horde on a PVE server. This is a dead end would you like to continue."

Personally, I think the can of worms opened by server transfers of any type is slowly destroying the game. My guild doesn't bother recruiting on our own server and I'm pretty sure most t6 guilds are the same. I enjoyed the idea that a promising new player could roll on a server and aspire someday to be a part of the best guild but is that even possible now? For 25$ it might be, but you have to leave any friends you might have made along the way. I can't say I would've been willing to pay.

I have never played a pvp server but I have to think that their apparent success in creating great raiding guilds is this forced loyalty.

At the very least, they should open up PvE -> PvP on those dead servers that are around, I guarantee they would love the fresh blood, and if those people decide to transfer from that PvP server to another one 3 months later, c'est la vie.

Leveling on a pvp server is easy and it will be even more easy with 2.3. Faster leveling plus an alternative to the STV potential gankfest will reduce PvP deaths greatly.

I absolutely agree with your entire post Antumbra, and I want to back it up by noting that the transfer options for my warrior are pretty "great" in terms of pve server options, but I think a lot of that has to do with the complete desparation of those guilds to find new blood, and the complete lack of qualified applicants. There's a reason that pvp guilds fill their app requests a LOT faster than PvE guilds do: there is a larger number of quality players on pvp servers at this point in the game. So if you're a quality player, and you rolled pve back in 2004 to play with your friends, why should you be penalized for wanting a better shot at playing with more quality players? It's HARD to find quality guilds looking for people on PvE servers. It's less hard to find quality guilds looking for people on pvp servers.

I actually forgot about that, thanks for bringing back the memory. I remember around 63-64 having some horde druid tanks tank quest mobs we both needed for me. Obviously no communication, I didn't know them and they didn't know me, we just both knew we needed the same thing so we helped eachother out tit for tat as game theory dictates.

Granted this was a PvE realm, but I really can't see it any different on a PvP realm other than if he didn't cooperate I'd have killed him, but obviously people were helpful cross faction so I doubt pvp would be the intent.

Not to mention lore wise horde vs alliance is so silly at this point in progression, why can't I attack the scryers in my guild? Why are they helping me in BT?


And, back on topic, I xfered this char off PvP to play with my friends guild. We all xfered to another pve realm and continued playing together. If they quit before I do, this char is pretty stranded and my only other friends that play WoW that I'd want to play with are on PvP servers, and not an option anymore. Definitely don't see the point.

Completely agreed. Out of boredom I leveled a character on a PvP server myself. Granted it was when most of the high level players were in Outland but that didn't stop the odd 70 from coming to grief lowbies now and then. Does it take more time to level on a PvP server? Sure but at most it will add another day of played time. That hardly merits a total block of transfers.

Also to people pointing out the differences of doing dailies and farming at 70... that's totally irrelevant as once you transfer you are subject to the same problems.

It seems to me that if you happen to reside on a PvE server of lesser quality there is a negative feedback loop and the server becomes more and more not appealing, if that grammar made sense, to play on.

Garona had the worst Alliance:Horde ratio ( Blizzard's own data, wherever that was posted ) the day Cross Server PVP came out and the alliance here is nothing to write home about. Night_Moogle could elaborate better than I could, but hes a prime example of what everyone is talking about.

It seems that if they don't allow the transfer, they should at least look into combining servers with low populations.

Yes, levelling my first character in Outland when TBC released was much peace love and flower-children.

Levelling my second, months later, when the skies of Hellfire Peninsula were abuzz with bored level 70's waiting for their Shattered Halls group to assemble - not quite the same experience!

Anyway, back on the topic, I agree that PvE to PvP transfers are overdue (and this is from the point of view of someone who's spent a few hours playing on a PvE server and thousands on PvP). BUT, I believe a necessary precondition for Blizzard changing policy will be them getting the tech for server merges up and running. I think that's needed already, based on what I hear of some servers, but a major change in the transfer rules is a potential hand grenade that they just won't want to toss unless they're prepared to merge any PvE servers that get gutted by the change.

Levelling Prot on Arthas was a horrific experience that led me to move to a PvE server. And it'd make it easier for PvE guilds to recruit if the members aren't stuck without access to 75%+ of the raid guilds out there if the move doesn't work out.

I agree, for the record. I was more pointing out the absurdity of saying "PvE transfers will destroy these servers" when PvP transfers are equally capable of doing so.

I would like it if they made this option available. Sometimes you meet other people who play the game. If they rolled PvP, great! They always have the option to transfer over and play with you. If they didn't... =( Too bad.

For me, having two seventies and much experience in the game, rerolling a L35 or L40 character would be big deal but not a huge one. Definitely doable if the cost was worth it. But many people are much more casual and to reroll a character that is 'at such a high level' might mean tossing away 4 or more months worth of work and effort. And yet, I'd like to play with those people when they reach cap.

WoW Forums -> [A-PvE] 2/5 Hyjal; tanks, healers, and more!
WoW Forums -> H - PvE - EST 2/5 Hyjal 3/9 BT <Shai Hulud>
WoW Forums -> [H-PvE]Limited Order-Thrall (Hyjal-BT)

There's three, took me a minute to find.

But, I do agree, PvE --> PvP needs to happen.

I actually leveled my original character as horde on Arthas, I know exactly what that was like, but I do agree that the leveling difference isn't as big as the questing farming differences now. I also agree with pve->pvp transfers, I don't think it's an issue, I'm just opposed to any kind of closing of servers to transfers.

Fair enough, I think the original point that the rush of people fleeing dead PVE servers would be more dangerous. I don't think it's an issue still, but it could be a legitimate point I think.

I'm not gonna start telling people that I'm hardcore because I'm on PvP, but there are definitely issues that anyone who isn't on PvP just doesn't understand.

Out of boredom tonite, I helped out one of my buddies on his 38 paladin. We started with the crown of will and guess what? 3 70's sitting in TM killin guards and lowbies. Well, until I got there. See, people that do this (95% of the time) are geared like garbage. For me with PvP gear, 3 level 70's in half greens = not even a challenge. So I crush em and we go on with life. Come back and I gotta crush them again because they didn't learn. Finally "I" get bored, and we go off to arathi. Seriously, I didn't eat a death the entire time, and I was just mowing these guys down and they keep coming back for more like there's some kind of cake slice sitting in the middle of TM that they want. If you're a level 25 in that situation, you're hosed. You're done for the night. Of course, we get the typical response "Just go somewhere else." Well, we did.

So we land in Arathi and there's a rogue and a druid sitting in hammerfall, killing guards and noobs. Same situation, even tag teaming me from stealth they couldn't get me to half. But this being Arathi, there's little to no high level presence. If it wasn't for me landing in the zone, they would have kept this up all night, killing anyone who happened to come down to see if they could quest. It's like this all over my shithole of a server. I have no idea if it happens to alliance or not, but it happens to Horde every single day. Every town, every day. It's relentless. For you to level up (at least on Boulderfist Horde side) it takes some serious effort and going out of your way to avoid level 70's with crap they bought off the AH who can't kill anyone even close to their level, but are happy killing level 35's all day.

Like I said, I'm not gonna tell you that I'm hardcore or anything, but there is a significant amount of hassle that isn't being considered here. It's definitely more than "lol, got ganked doing my dailiyz!" and I personally think that should count for SOMETHING.

I never understod the PVP - PVE server transfer denial either. For some reason completely oblivious to me my guild decided back in May or April or so to transfer from a PVP to PVE realm, well I think it was due to the congestion of russians making it impossible to recruit good, new english speaking members. Now we're stuck there and sometimes I highly regret following suit over there cause the server is quite shitty.

I never had a problem leveling on PVP server, actually my last two levels from 58 to 60 were done by me tapping mobs in WPL whilst 3 alliance mages from the best guild on the server AOEd them down for me, whenever I got hit they sheeped me and healed me up. Quite nice for people I'd never met before =) I actually miss the huge PVP battles outside AQ40 as well :|

At the same time, I rolled on a PvE server because I wanted to do PvE content at max-level. Now I've found out that I'm limited to an incredibly small community with Horde PvE, even if I did server transfer. The situation right now is absurd. I don't care about being on a pvp server or not. Frankly, if they let me transfer and it acted exactly like a PvE server for me, that's dandy.

Yes, I personally have no plans to transfer to a different guild. If I did, though, I would have barely any choices compared to someone else, and why? Because I thought the biggest difference between the servers was that on one, I'd get corpse camped while I was leveling? As has been pointed out, there are far more high-end raiding guilds on PvP servers. Rerolling PvP to do high-end PvE content seems silly to me, to be honest.

But how much? How much grief did you experience levelling up to 70? Was it noticeable enough that this recent quote by Blizzard (courtesy Presarc on the FoH Boards) applies?

Fraught with additional dangers and frustrations for many players...

Honestly, who here has logged off due to heavy PvP from levelling their character recently? Last time I logged from PvP was early January 2005, and the last time I wouldn't have considered someone being a pussy for doing so was probably September 2005. This is certainly not the case now, as I'm not even sure 99% of the people levelling up get mildly annoyed from it, let alone frustrated to the point of earning an experience.

The problem isn't that we don't get what it's like to play on a PvP server. I've played MMO PvP (more specifically, I played EverQuest PvP, which was a game very similar in core/base mechanics to this one) for nearly a decade now. I played on a PvP server in beta World of Warcraft. I played on a PvP server for the first two years of this game's life. I completely get what it means to level up in every stage in a PvP server's life -- I've done it all. The problem is that we DO understand what it means to level up and play on a PvP server, but apparently Blizzard does not. The PvP experience as the game stands now is best experienced at the end game, the point at which a level 70 character transferring over would be in the same boat as you. The miniscule amount of time or frustration from the PvP experience pre-level cap is simply not enough to warrant the restriction on transfers.



The game has been streamlined to the end, and everyone agrees that the real meat and bones of it all starts at level 70. Why, then, would you continue to restrict transfers based on mostly irrelevant content?

It's always a funny thing when you are talking about "how leveling is different".

I mean, honestly, I leveled my first character on a PvE server. I'd played extensively in closed and open beta and my leveling experience would have been completely unaffected by a PvP server. Seriously, and I'm sure I have a lot of company here, if you were in the top 1, 10 or 100 people to hit 60 on your realm, PvP flagging would be a non-issue completely. Hell, life would have been easier given that I could gank the occasional person trying to steal my node.

Since then, I've fooled around on a number of PvP servers at many different points in their development. Sometimes it's ganky, sometimes it isn't. I won't say it's identical to a PvE server but it sure isn't worse. In many ways it is far easier to get groups while leveling on a PvP server, both for instances and for quests. The situation breeds people helping each other out, especially in contrast to PvE Horde where the tendency is just to level alone.

I don't know in the end, perhaps it is a horrible idea for some reason I am failing to grasp. To say it's horrible because PvP servers are all hardcore and such though just doesn't jibe with my experiences.

I find it a little curious that no-one considers the possibility that opening up the PvE=>PvP flow might mean characters migrate from PvP realms to PvE realms With the return trip secured, wouldn't some guilds actually prefer to get rid of meeting stone camping etc, knowing it is safe and they can reverse their decision after 3 months.

Be as it may, it would probably be beneficial to allow this type of transfer, on both ends.

But, somehow I would guess the flow might be faster in the opposit direction to what most here assume. If you are into end game content, why bother with world PvP if it doesn't bring any special benefits, like the player base available exclusively on PvP servers atm?