~Now thou art come unto a feast of death~

(Henry VI 4.5.7)

I dislike Summer, in many ways. It brings with it buzzing insects that keep you awake at night, hours of heat that bog you down, a slew of awful "blockbuster" movies at the cinema, and general apathy in kids who would much rather be outside than sat in a classroom cramming for SATs or GCSEs.

This bears little relevance to today's blog, but I just figured it was worth mentioning. I'm sat in the dining room and I'm sweltering rather than going to lie down in the dark upstairs and sweltering.

No today, as you may have gathered from the blog title, I wish to talk about battle. I'm not talking world conflict here, I'm of course talking about battle in computer games. Specifically, the nature of Player versus Player (PvP) combat in two games - World of Warcraft (WoW), and Age of Conan (AoC).

World of Warcraft has come under a lot of fire since Blizzard released the Burning Crusade (TBC) expansion pack. In some ways I don't and can't understand why. Lots and lots of people moan about how the endgame was better before, and that since then its just been dumbed down and diluted. I can't comment. I didn't do endgame stuff before TBC was released anyways. Though I have heard that, apart from Naxxramas, which was apparently of excellent quality, the 40-man raid stuff was in actual fact a bit wank. So I haven't missed much in that sense.

PvP in WoW is a mixed bag. Basically it all comes down to the Arena system these days, and I freely admit the system - while great in terms of rewards for casual noobs like me - is actually not one I'm good at. Small-scale PvP like this just isn't my forte. As I've been showing in CoD4 multiplayer, I simply don't have the reactions for PvP. Hell, as a healer I barely have the reaction time for a 10-man Karazhan raid. So much to keep track of, so many buttons, so many abilities. I suppose that is the bane of the Priest in PvP/Raiding - lots of versatility but BOY do you have to think fast to use it.

No, my main focus on PvP in WoW has always been the battlegrounds. Larger scale, less punishing on the team if (when >_>) I fuck up. And, over the course of a few days/weeks, you can grind enough honour points to get some decent equipment. Or, at least, I could do if I hadn't burned out on WoW PvP grinding for some shiny swords for my rogue that I've barely played since.

WoW PvP is often about gear and class combinations. Not a huge amount of skill involved from what I've seen. He with the bigger axe wins. But like I say, I'm not really qualified to talk about the pros and cons of the system. I just know that, when I started playing WoW in the first beta test way back when, I rolled on a PvP server and hated it as soon as I moved out of the relatively safe starter territories.

You see, I have no problem with killing other players. When I'm IN battlegrounds, I tend to enjoy them. Even if we're losing. Because generally I get swept away in the flow and atmosphere, even though I'm not great at it.

What I don't like is, as a lv.24 hunter questing in Ashenvale, some lv.38 Horde rogue waiting till I'm at 10% life fighting a spider and stabbing me till I die. Which doesn't take long. At all. Ganking is, quite simply, annoying.

"That's PvP though!" people cry on the forums. "It adds to the excitement!"

Does it? Killing someone ten levels lower, with half your hitpoints, is exciting?! No. It's EASY. There's no challenge to be had here. There's no skill involved.

"It's the nature of the game!"

No. It's human nature. To be assholes, even in game. Sure I can appreciate that killing people who don't have a chance to win might be vaguely therepeutic. But seriously, it's all over so soon, what's the point?

So this last weekend, I was playing Age of Conan. The open beta client had been patched up and was running pretty darned smooth. All characters lv.2 and above had an item in their inventory to make them lv.20 with decent equip. And all the servers were flagged as Free-For-All PvP.

What that basically meant is that, outside cities, everyone was fair game. You can kill friends, enemies, guild members, etc.

And thus the kill frenzy brought out the worst kind of people. People who grouped up and camped spawn points and instantly ganked everyone before the load screen had disappeared for the unlucky guy or gal who'd already been killed elsewhere. I spent a long while just Hiding and reading global chat, and people were finding it FUN just to camp these places for the free kills. There was no trying to justify it as testing the PvP system: one guy versus four isn't gonna last long enough for them to be testing anything anyway. They were, quite simply, just out to cause grief and get as much senseless enjoyment of their own limited superiority as they can.

In battlegrounds in WoW, very few people camp the graveyards. This is because there's a res timer and generally 3 or more people all respawn at once. In AoC, there was no such timer, so people were respawning solo. There was also no limited window of invulnerability at respawn, though it has been hinted that this may have been a bug in the end beta client. I hope it was, though it won't make a huge difference to me.

I will be rolling on a PvE server, just as I ended up doing with WoW. I have no problem with PvP. I respect people who live for developing the skills to do it properly and do it well. I have problems with griefers and gankers and just general wankers with no code of honour or principles, out for cheap thrills and cheap kills. I haven't read the Conan books. I don't know if the warriors in his stories had any kind of code of honour, respect for fellow warriors etc. I don't know if Conan himself would have taken advantage of a wounded enemy soldier and killed him. Maybe he would have done. It would certainly seem the sensible thing to do in a story.

But in a living world like those found in MMORPGs, I've always found a little courtesy goes a long way.

Sad thing then that a lot of the people posting on the AoC forums don't seem to quite follow that philosophy. Phrases such as "Go back to WoW" or "roll PvE you carebear" are all too frequent it seems.

Firstly, while I admit that WoW is not a perfect game, I dislike the general attitude that anyone with an opinion about anything that is imperfect about AoC is automatically a spy or mole sent by Blizzard to cause dissent in the ranks.

Secondly I detest the term "carebear". No, I don't want to PvP all the time. Sometimes when I log into an MMO I want to do a couple of quests, pick up some XP, and go to bed. I don't want to have to deal with the added stress of constantly looking over my shoulder to see if some Assassin is gonna sneak up behind me and kill me dead. Sure in some ways that's more gritty and realistic. But I play to have fun. And I think a lot of hardcore FFA-PVP supporters forget that not everyone has fun being ganked 24/7 when they log into a game.

PvP has a place in my life, and I'm hoping that PvP in Conan will be good. After all, I DO enjoy playing as part of a team. But on my time, when I want to. If I have to do it all the time, even against my own guild, my own people, then I simply will find another game, and I think a huge amount of people were put off PvP in Conan simply because of this FFA-PVP "event".

And in some ways, some disgruntled, cynical way, I'm probably happy for that. Let the FFA PVP jerks stay on their servers, and let some skilled PvPers onto the PvE server where they can PvP all the time if they want to. And they WILL want to at lv.80, I'm almost certain.

Will *they* be labelled as carebears? Or will they simply take the stand that playing with ganking assholes with no code of honour or morals isn't REAL pvp. The forums seem to suggest the latter.

So there is hope for the AoC community yet!

~J