Well, all I can say is that from my experiance, on a very average EU PvE server according to the realm stats, is that world PvP was an utter failure. It consisted of 100+ alliance players, at all times of the day, steam rolling 20 horde players into the very middle of Tarren Mill.

Alliance queue times are up to an hour, and Horde are almost instant, which is the average case I believe.

Hate to sound pessimistic, but on my server, I can only see 2 outcomes : i) World pvp resumes, which results in crushing defeats for the horde simply though numbers, or ii) everyone ignores it, and occasionally the alliance get a buff as a group is bored.

I just think there are bigger issues between the factions that need sorting right now, and adding in something which has a clear and obvious potential to further unbalance that isn't a great thing. I know Blizzard are counting on it, but I *really* don't see Blood elves as restoring the balance that much. At best we'll get a bunch of alts that level up slowly.

I've always wondered wtf those Alliance outriders were doing in Barrens - no quest to kill them ever presented itself.

If you kill them one of them drops a note that starts a small questline

Of course, good luck getting people of your level in the Barrens together to actually kill them in a reasonable fight instead of outlevelling them and killing them solo for the hell of it some time later.

From Blizzard's pov it would appear that whether or not this is a success or failure the difference that it will make is marginal. It's just an extra added bonus for players to have one more thing to do. My biggest concern is the population imbalance on PvP servers and raiding guilds trying to zone into AQ/Naxx and the gankfest that it will become, but that's little issue for something new being added to the game that will give us something else to do if we choose to. The only thing I wish they would add was some cool incentives for doing this, besides CP. I think someone mentioned it earlier in the post, teleport runes to LHC and CH would be awesome.

looks like it's time to do the 'gather at the flight point to head to the raid zone together' song and dance again. world pvp objectives in the two zones containing the current high-end raid content. coincidence? heh.

Well the two outdoor PvP zones are the only 55-60 zones (Winterspring is 58-60?), so that is target range they want to PvP, and the areas are remote, so low level questers are safe.

I've been mulling over the idea of a Starcraft MMORPG (or more acurately, a MMOFPS) for a while now. I think WoW would be an interesting testing ground for these concepts.

The game would be like Planetside, which was fun, albeit only for two weeks because there were no longer term goals and no real character advancement. The problem was that there was no way to capture and fortify territory aside from simply bringing in more people to defend it. No NPCs. No guards. Nothing.

Throughout the world, there are bases to capture. These bases would be defended by static defenses and NPC guards. Capturing the base would reset the base under the control of the new faction and respawn all the guards and defenses. Controlling bases earns honor and tokens redeemable for training or items.

To address population imbalances, the guards grow stronger or weaker depending on the realm population and number of bases controlled. So if Terran is the dominant faction on your server, the terran NPC guards are far weaker than Protoss guards, since they are the minority faction. I'm not talking one or two degrees weaker, I mean assrape degrees of difference between the guards. If you have three times as many people, you should be able to deal with more and tougher NPCs. If the population evens out, the guards thin out.

But what is to stop people from only focusing their energies on a single base and making that the center of all warfare? (Sup, Emain Macha and Tarren Mill.) If a base remains captured for an extended period of time without being challenged, NPCs from the opposing factions start spawning and sieging the base. Over time, if players do not interfere, the NPCs will grow increasingly stronger and more numerous to the point that they overrun the base and capture it without the aid of players.

When I say NPCs spawn, I don't just mean waves of footmen. I mean full-scale invasions. Say the zerg are the minority faction and there's a far-off Terran base that hasn't been touched in a while. At first, zerglings start spawning and hurling themselves against the gates. They die, predictably. Six hours later, still no players have bothered to show up. More zerglings spawn, and Hydralisks show up. Six hours later, still no players. Mutalisks and Ultralisks show up. You get the idea.

The problem is, this would only work in a next-gen game engine. The current WoW technology can't handle hundreds of units onscreen at once, evidence the AQ war. Hopefully, whatever game comes next finds a way around this limitation. Hell, RTS games are already doing it.

I've always thought of a capture the city sort of place where dynamic use of the terrain could make or break it (maybe i just want to snipe from towers and have mages hopping on walls). There would be two bases on each side, one for each faction and they would send 'waves' to assult the neutral town.

These waves would be equal in terms of power if no players are nereby. However, they should have a buff, a scaling buff. The less players of their faction in the city and around it, the stronger they become. and vice versa, a group of 70 alliance would still have to work together because this wave would be a mini raidboss in power if say 2 horde were there. Or something like that