Null Signifier

This is a brief analysis of the proposed upcoming PvP changes coming to WoW in patch 5.2. My capacity to comment might be qualified by my standing as a sub-2k player (my best Arena personal rating is 1809), but here goes nonetheless. I’m going to assume that people are conversant with the proposed changes in order to keep this article brief and avoid unnecessary paraphrasing. For further details on the actual changes I would direct the reader to the Battle.net website and to read the article for themselves.

Team Rating Inflation

Implemented in order to combat high rating camping and to encourage PvP activity in the mid and later stages of the season, this change will chiefly impact higher rated players who, up to this point, have been engaging in this type of early season blitz. It won't have a significant effect on most people's playing patterns - everyone will still have to grind their CP via Arenas or Rated BGs, including high rated campers - but people pushing rating will now have to factor in inflation when deciding whether to keep on pushing or not.

The bigger implication will be how inflation redefines what current Arena ratings mean. Currently Blizzard delineates four tiers of Arena ability at 1550, 1750, 2000 and 2200 respectively by awarding achievements (and access to T2 gear at 2.2k) at each of these levels. The biggest impact Arena rating inflation will have will be to redefine what, to cite an example, a 1550 player is. A 1550 level player in Season 12 might be a 1700 player in Season 13, depending on how much team ratings increase per week. To a certain extent Arena ratings have always been elastic – the team rating has never been as important as the actual distribution curve within each of the respective Battlegroups for determining end of season titles. To cite an example, in my formative Arena days my hunter won the Challenger title (top 35% of Battlegroup) with a low 3s team rating of 1495 in Season 6, while in recent seasons a team would require a rating of at least 1600 to get the same result. In Season 13, however, there is the potential for wildly elevated team ratings depending on the rate of inflation. A mere 10 points per week over a 20 week season would add 200 points to your team rating, assuming that your team was active the whole season. This would mean that an 1800 rated player in Season 12 would become a 2k player in Season 13 (yay me!).

Elimination of the Rating Requirement for the 2.2k T2 Weapon

I feel that the rationale behind this change is a good one. Since creating a toon on Frostmourne I have had more exposure to higher level players than I am accustomed to in my home server of Thorium Brotherhood, and the chat on Skype in between Rated BG games seem to indicate widespread approval. Team captains in Rated BGs consistently scrutinize the opposition’s match making ratings to try to ascertain whether or not the opposition has access to T2 weapons. T2 represents a significant boost to the enemy’s damage output, and the removal of this demarcation line at 2.2k goes a long way to evening the playing field. Good players deserve their high standings due to their superior gameplay and coordination – they don’t need further equipment-based advantages which further distances them away from the pack, and which creates an artificial and quite unnecessary barrier between the have and the have-nots.

27000 Conquest Point Cap

To replace the 2.2k requirement Blizzard is instead implementing a 27k CP aggregate requirement to access T2 gear. 27000 divided by 1800 (the default CP cap without RBGs) equals 15 weeks of grinding – 27000 divided by 2200 (the default cap with RBGs) equals 13 weeks. To be able to get the T2 weapon in 10 weeks you would need a weekly cap of at least 2700 (actually even more because in the first week everyone has a cap of 2200). Rated BGs are going to be more important than ever in the upcoming patch, as they have a higher impact on the CP cap than Arenas. Rated BG rating will also be more important, for the same reason – players will have to try and maintain a RBG rating above 1800 in order to gain access to the T2 weapon in 10 weeks or less.

Whether or not you like this change will depend on your access to a RBG team and how good that team is. Nonetheless, the only real penalty will be time. Players who play up to the 1800 cap each week will get access to T2 gear after 15 weeks – 2200 cappers after 13 weeks – 2700 (which will require an estimated 1800+ RBG rating) cappers after 10 weeks – and even less for higher rated players with higher CP caps. A player who has the maximum possible weekly CP cap of 4000 points (I’m not sure at what rating this happens at) will get access to T2 after 7 weeks, making the difference between a Rank 1 Gladiator and Joe Noob (who is industriously capping his CP at 1800 every week) a mere two months. Compare this the old system, where players never even got access to T2 gear at all unless they got to 2200, and this is an amazingly dramatic improvement in the quality of life of sub 2.2k players.

Increased CP Cap for Latecomers

Another excellent idea because it allows entry to PvP in mid-season where normally the gear differential makes it very difficult to compete against players who have already been accummulating significant amounts of current PvP gear. The most common argument against this is that it invalidates the effort of people who start grinding CP at the beginning of the season. Why bother grinding from the start of the season, some argue, when someone can start 10 weeks later and instantly get the same amount of gear?

Upon closer inspection you can see the fallacy of this argument. First of all. they still have to earn those points via Arena matches and Rated BGs so they will have to play and win an equivalent amount of games nonetheless. They are not spared the grind - they just do it over a shorter period of time. Secondly, the retrospective 1000 CP bonus cap is still significantly less than the regular weekly CP cap. After 10 weeks of grinding to the minimum 1800 cap a player will have accumulated 18000 CP - a player who starts PvPing 10 weeks into the season will have accumulated a retrospective cap bonus of 10000 CP which is still 8000 less than the player who began grinding CP at the start of the season. Players with higher ratings and CP caps will have earned significantly more, making grinding from the start of the season still the optimal approach for accummulating PvP gear. All the retrospective cap does is to lessen the gap differential which would otherwise be near insurmountable.

Awarding CP for Rated BG Losses

Another good innovation, especially because of the way the CP cap becomes instrumental in how quickly one can get access to T2 weapons in 5.2. The biggest bottleneck in acquiring CP for casual players is finding a Rated BG team, and anything which encourages people to form teams should be welcomed. PuG RBG teams are usually smashed mercilessly due to lack of team cohesion, and consequently disband after one or two losses without anything to show for their efforts. This innovation will encourage people to persevere, as even losing efforts award CP and help them reach their weekly cap.

Preliminary Conclusions

Speaking as someone who is on the wrong side of the 2.2k divide, I have nothing but applause for all these upcoming changes. I could see how this would irk players on the other side of 2.2k, because it removes the exclusivity of that particular club of players – you either had the weapon or you didn’t, and as a further boost your weapon allowed you to deal a significantly higher level of dps than those people who could not make the 2.2k cut. Taking the rating requirement away and giving access to it to everyone else does not diminish the original achievement of getting there in the first place. It takes great team work and gameplay to get that kind of rating, and it may well be out of reach for someone like me. What I have always found objectionable, however, is giving great players a further and quite unnecessary advantage in gear. The best analogy I can come up with would be like holding a chess tournament and awarding people who achieve a high level on the ladder an extra piece to play with in subsequent games. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where two teams, one above 2.2k armed with T2 weapons and the other just below 2.2k armed with T1 weapons, being pitted together by the match maker. Assuming mirror teams (to avoid balance arguments) and equal skill, the team armed with T2 weapons would win. How can that be considered fair? The only thing the team armed with T2 did different to their counterparts was that they acquired their weapon earlier. Hence part of the reason why high level teams blitz so early in the season is to get the weapon because it gives them such a powerful edge. They are, in essence, forced to do so because failing to acquire the weapon early would disadvantage them dramatically against their counterparts. Removing the rating requirement on 2.2k weapons seems to be the logical conclusion of Blizzard's movement away from a misconceived system of PvP rewards to a much more egalitarian playing field where skill and teamwork, not gear, are primary determiners of rating.

I am a big fan of emergent narratives. Having played X-Com: Enemy Unknown and completed it on Normal and Classic difficulty (with Ironman toggled on), I have witnessed my brave band of heroes grow from untested rookies to hardened veterans during the course of the campaign. There have been acts of heroism; countless victories; desperate defeats; and casualties. Oh yes, casualties. In my Classic playthrough only two of the original 12 soldiers I began with survived to see the final mission on the alien mothership - to see one of them sacrifice themselves on the final mission in order to save the world was a poignant gaming moment for me.

Cheesy, I know. And to the uninitiated, a little tragic. Alright, it is pretty bloody sad, to be honest - after all, it's just a game, right? But that's the power of emergent narratives. The ability of some games to allow unscripted stories to emerge organically from gameplay. Emergent narratives are not a one way street - they don't just spontaneously emerge from the game bundled in a novella shaped package, ready for consumption. They require, on some level, reciprocal engagement from the player in order to bring out these emergent features. If you don't dig alien invasions or squad level military combat, chances are that X-Com is going to leave you cold. But then again, it might not, because X-Com does a pretty good job of sucking you in.

On the surface X-Com is a turn based game with two levels of play - it is both a fairly straightforward strategic resource management simulation, and a squad level tactical combat game. Embedded in the game, however, lies the potential for player driven stories to emerge. It begins with the customization of your soldiers. Country of origin is chosen by the game, but everything else - appearance, voice, name, and nickname (once earned) - is customizable. There are different specializations for each soldier, with a dual path for each spec. Experience in combat allows the soldiers to progress to higher ranks and unlock what will be essential skills in the more difficult parts of the game. In addition you are responsible for the state of your soldier's armaments, armor and equipment, as it is you who decides where you spend your hard-earned resources and which avenues of research to prioritize.

This is nothing new to modern gamers - this is the bread and butter of the most ancient pre-cursor to the games we play today, pen and paper roleplaying games. What X-Com does well is to make the soldiers matter. In addition to the hook of personalization, higher level soldiers become important simply because you need veteran soldiers to fight the enemy in the mid and endgame. Squads composed of rookie soldiers are ruthlessly decimated. Couple this with Ironman mode, where all choices are irrevocable - you play through the game with one save - and where death is final, and you have a recipe for high drama. There are no resurrections or reloads. When a trusted veteran goes down it hurts on a gaming level. More importantly, you also feel it on a narrative level.

The option to save and load is there of course - you don't have to play Ironman mode - but for me this cheats the player of a richer and more compelling experience. It is hard to identify with your soldiers when they are, in effect, immortal - they cannot die because you can always choose to reload the game from an earlier point. It's hard to empathize with gods. But with Ironman enabled, your soldiers become mere mortals struggling mightily against an overwhelming and increasingly powerful enemy. The possibility of death makes heroism possible. In my games I have seen my medic charge suicidally into the open to try and save a dying team mate, while his friends tried desperately to cover him. The medic died, but his team mate lived, and eventually took part in the final mission. And even though that particular soldier was gone, his memory lived on in the Memorial Wall of the fallen (included in the game) and in the soldier he saved.

The sequence of events and the internal narrative generated by my imagination were not scripted by the makers of the game - they emerged organically and naturally as I played. On a strictly functional level all I was doing was playing a tactical turn based game, pushing pieces around a square board against a computer opponent. But narratively, I was fearing for my medic's life, cursing my soldiers by name when they missed crucial shots, and cheering when gambles made with long odds paid off. Soldiers develop personalities based on events generated in game - the sniper with the deadly aim whose skill saved many lives became "unflappable", the assault trooper who consistently panicked whenever anything went awry became "cowardly", and the heavy trooper who consistently got injured and bounced back mission after mission became "stoic". Even tactical mistakes I made on a gaming level became attributed to the soldier's personalities. The soldier who got shot at from all sides because I pushed him too far forward became "impetuous", "reckless" and "hot-headed". Oddly enough, after that mission he started (or rather I started) doing the same tactically suspect moves again and again, but rather than reeling that impulse in I started to incorporate it into my tactics. It felt right narratively, i.e. that it was something he would do, given the personality that emerged from the missions he had played. I could imagine his commander chewing him out when they returned to base, and the soldier arguing back, saying "I needed to save those civilians, sir". A strange feedback loop is established, where what happens in game shapes the character of your soldiers, which in turn affects the way you play the game.

A game can be linear and emergent - that is, there can be a central narrative propelling the story forward which also leaves room for player driven narratives to emerge. In X-Com, yes, the story is always the same - aliens attack Earth, Earth fights back, Earth researches and develops x, and x is eventually used to defeat the aliens. Pretty simple stuff. But as illustrated above, the space in X-Com where emergent narratives can emerge lies in the development of the soldiers you take with you on mission after mission, and the battles they fight as they try to stem the increasing alien tide. One example of where narrative would NOT be emergent would be a soldier in X-Com who was destined to die in a particular point in time no matter what you did. Thus the single soldier sacrificing himself/herself to save the squad (and Earth) at the end of the game is clearly not an emergent feature of the story. I stated at the opening of this article that it was poignant moment for me the first time I saw it, and indeed it was. But it was poignant because of that particular character's narrative arc - the battles she faced, the close calls she had, and the comrades she had lost in getting to that particular point of the game - and not because it was pre-destined.

Once you know a soldier is fated to die at the end of the game, it becomes factored into your squad development - in effect you know who is going to be the "Volunteer" and you make the choice based on how you want your story to develop. Do you want to spare your favourite character from this fate so that they have a chance to live happily ever after (so to speak), or do you incorporate it into your character's story arc and make them the hero-martyr of the narrative? Regardless of what you choose however, it becomes part of the framework of the story and it loses its power to move you. Pre-determined death happens time and time again in RPGs as part of traditional narratives - Ashley Williams and Kaiden Alenko in Mass Effect come to mind, as well as Aeris in Final Fantasy VII - their fates are written in the stars and beyond the player's control to influence (although in the case of Mass Effect, you can choose who lives and who dies). This is not necessarily a bad thing - the death of Aeris was no less gut-wrenching for me despite being pre-determined - but it illustrates the chief difference between traditional and emergent narratives. An equivalent gut-wrenching moment for me in X-Com would be when my entire squad, including my sniper commander who had led her team the whole campaign, perished in a mission that went south. It ended that particular campaign for me, despite the fact that I would have still been able to continue. The loss of the entire team was too painful to contemplate going on without them. In fact I have started over 20 Ironman campaigns, and I have not technically lost any of them. The aliens never completely conquered Earth. In all but the two instances where I won the game, however, I basically quit because the characters I was able to identify with perished - as far as I was concerned, that narrative was over.

Both events - the death of Aeris, and the loss of the entire X-Com squad - were equally devastating at the time they occurred. But while Aeris' death loses its impact after the first viewing, the unexpected death of a beloved veteran remains powerful simply because it wasn't scripted - it could have been avoided, and it could have happened during any mission in the game. The fact that the game makes me care about these virtual soldiers is to its credit. I'm fairly sure I callously sacrifice hundreds of virtual lives in other strategic games without giving any thoughts to the abstract human cost. I don't mourn any of the Terran soldiers I send out to die horrible deaths against the Zerg in Starcraft 2. As far as I am concerned they are just cannon fodder in my quest to push rating on the tournament ladder. X-Com does a great job in making your soldiers human, and like humans, they each have a story - a story written by the player, formed in the player's head which gives context and meaning to the events that occur inside the game. The mortality and fragility of your soldiers also adds to the sense of danger and makes each mission potentially their last.

X-Com's greatest achievement, however, is incorporating failure into the game without making failure a game-ending event. In many RPGs the fourth wall is consistently broken when you (or your party of intrepid heroes) die. Death is a game-ending condition, and it jolts us out of the game back into the real world. Your only choices are to reload, or to start from scratch, or to quit the game. Quiting ends our immersion. Reloading destroys the illusion that we are not, in fact, omnipotent and that our agents are immortal. Starting again? Why bother in traditional narratives when we already know how the story will unfold?

In X-Com your soldiers can die; you can fail a mission; you can fail a string of missions; everyone in your squad can die horrific deaths; and yet the war continues, until the defeat threshold is reached. Thus the game neatly sidesteps the problem of keeping the fourth wall intact, while keeping the impact of losing our beloved veterans as devastating as ever, undiluted by repeated reloads. By contrast, my Commander Shepherd in Mass Effect 3 has died numerous times in the line of duty - in all these cases, death was just an annoying inconvenience brought on by a lapse of gameplay or poor decision-making. To paraphrase Bill Murray in Groundhog Day - "I've killed myself so many times I don't even exist anymore". Shepherd cannot die. The same cannot be said when an X-Com soldier goes down in the line of duty - they can only die once, and that particular soldier, with his own unique back story, is gone forever without recall in Ironman mode.

I mentioned earlier that I have quit campaigns when too many of my favourite soldiers perish in the line of duty. I also argued that there is no good reason to restart traditional RPGs because we already know what will transpire. So why do I keep restarting? The linear storyline of X-Com does not lend itself to replay, so why bother? Again, the answer lies in the genesis, growth and death of your squad. When your squad wipes in X-Com, there is no reload option - they are gone. What you are left with are the options to either quit, restart or continue the campaign. In many ways the option to restart or to continue are interchangeable - in both cases you have to create an entirely new squad from scratch. The only difference is the status of your strategic game, and the effective power level of the aliens, which escalates as the game progresses. In either case, the new squad has no back story and is devoid of personality. Rookies are used mercilessly and thrown into dangerous situations with reckless abandon. After a few missions, though, you start to empathise with the little guys, and the story begins anew. For me, however, my main goal in X-Com is to create an epic narrative arc where characters are thrown into "real" life-threatening situations and overcome them - there is a fail threshold for me, and that is when all of the original 12 soldiers who begin the campaign with me perish. Once this threshold is breached, I consider the story ended, and begin the campaign anew.

Compare this with an RPG like Dragon Age, where the composition of your party, while customizable, remains limited to the characters created by Bioware. Furthermore when they "die" they are not permanently removed from the game. I actually think that this is a great idea as it raises the stakes dramatically in each combat. The reload paradigm removes the "mortal" from combat, however, and basically turns it into an intellectual exercise where you deploy a set of tactics to overcome the enemy as efficiently as possible. The only penalty for death in DA is time. In X-Com, it is time, as well as the loss of a strategic asset (experienced soldiers are battle winning) and your emotional investment in the soldier. I can't really invest in Morrigan and Alister in the same way that I can with Major Xiang Xou from the Republic of China just because of the simple fact that the former two cannot die. While I remain interested in the branching stories of Morrigan and Alister and chuckle at their scripted banter, I never actually fear for their lives, except perhaps as a consequence of one of my choices. Even in this case the choice lies in my hands. By comparison, Xou's fate is never entirely in my hands - I can stack the chances of survival in her favour by being careful and employing good tactics, but one can never fully predict things like panic, collapsing cover, exploding vehicles, stray grenades/RPG rounds, terrible RNG and/or straightforward user error. In my opinion, X-Com's ability to allow player to identify with their soldiers, coupled with a continuing narrative where death and failure are possible but not game breaking, are the two biggest reasons why the series has been so beloved by so many fans over the years.

So, if you're a fan of emergent narratives like I am, give X-Com a whirl. Play it on Ironman and let your choices matter. It's not perfect, but it has given me hours of fun, and reminded me why I loved the original so many years ago. More importantly, it made me think deeply for the first time on the reasons why I loved this type of game, and made me excited about the possibilites of emergent narratives in other games in the future. This is the first time I have written anything about games (WoW PvP related posts on various forums aside), and much of the underlying impetus for that lies in the stories generated by my squad of virtual soldiers. I would not argue against critics who said that the types of stories generated by the gameplay in X-Com are simplistic, formulaic and limited to a narrative discourse which has its roots in Aliens, Starship Troopers, and perhaps dating back to seminal male-orientated cinematic epics like The Seven Samurai and The Dirty Dozen. There is something be said, however, for being able to own the narrative. Regardless of how predictable and derivative these stories are, they are generated by the player and they are uniquely yours. That is why the X-Com series, FTL, the Jagged Alliance series and the UFO series have a special place in my gaming heart. Everyone wants to be a hero, or at least, play a hero in our escapist fantasies. But only by foregoing some of our omnipotence as gamers, by introducing the concept of permadeath and the possibility of failure can a type of virtual heroism be emulated in the games that we play.

If you are a regular reader of Gevlon (aka the Greedy Goblin) you will know that the term "morons and slackers" is his pet phrase to describe players who don't fit his typology of the competent gamer. I must confess that I'm a regular reader of Gevlon's blog, and I have, up to this point, been content with simply reading his weekly posts, marvelling at his obvious command of the in-game economics of both Eve Online and World of Warcraft while simultaneously being perplexed at his attempts to articulate a consistent model of philosophy and gaming theory. In my opinion he is at his best and most incisive when carrying out market analysis in both Eve and WoW, and contradictory and unconvincing when trying to create typologies of gamer types and player motivations (all "rational" players become Gevlon archetypes and do not take into account differing motivations for playing). The purpose of this post, however, is not to deal with either topic - the aim here is to critically examine some of Gevlon's assertions regarding WoW and to at least provide some balancing counter-arguments against the claim that WoW is purely for "morons and slackers". I know that WoW is Gevlon's favourite punching bag, and he often compares Eve Online to WoW, often to the latter's detriment - while he does make good points he has a habit of making unsupported generalizations which does not apply to all of the entity known as WoW. The thrust of my argument is that while WoW caters for the broadest possible market there exists in-game several sub-species of gaming which are extremely competitive environments where skill, planning, strategy and teamwork are not just present, but are mandatory if you wish to excel. Gevlon argues that WoW requires no skill. This is a dissenting opinion.

"In WoW if you play totally incompetently, do whatever you desire in the moment, ignore planning and thinking, you still get every possible in-game reward." (Gevlon, 28 December 2012)

The problem with such a sweeping assertion is that it fails to address that WoW is not a monolithic entity, but rather quite a large game composed of several distinct sub-games. The most obvious rebuttal to this statement is the area of WoW which I personally love and spend most of my time on - ladder-based PvP, specifically Arena and Rated BGs. Ironically the reason why I found Gevlon's blog was because I began a Rated BG team in 2011 and I found his page while searching the web for Rated BG tactics. Gevlon's old WoW guild played Rated BGs to a decent level of achievement and proficiency, given the fact that they progressed to a point where they were using complex tactics as articulated on Gevlon's website. Gevlon of all people would know that incompetent play and lack of planning ensures complete failure in this type of competitive PvP environment, and therefore it surprises me that he continues to make such sweeping generalizations such as the one cited above given his own first hand experience. Not everyone gets the Gladiator title, or Duelist, or Rival, or even Challenger. Not everyone gets Arena Master. In fact, the vast majority of the WoW playing population doesn't even have the lowest level of Arena achievement, which would be the 1550+ achievement. Of all the in-game rewards that are supposedly available for everyone, PvP based ones are the most difficult to achieve and in fact, will be out of reach for the vast majority of the WoW player base.

"'Failure' is not defined in WoW... In such an environment making effort or gaining skill is wasting time. I left it for Eve in hope for a competitive environment." (Gevlon, 28 December 2012)

"PvP is competitive play. But to have a competition we must be able to compare performance." (Gevlon, 4 February 2013)

Ladder based PvP provides exactly the type of competitive environment that Gevlon claims does not exist in WoW. Furthermore, the existing ladder gives us a way to "compare performance" which, according to Gevlon himself, is essential to PvP play. Blizzard has clearly delineated four tiers of skill for Arena, as shown by the achievements at 1550+, 1750+, 2000+ and 2200+ respectively. Higher than that and you are among the elite that have the skill and reflexes to compete in regional and global tournaments for real world money. If we equate success and failure with winning and losing then one can see the fallacy of Gevlon's statement. The WoW PvP ladder is one of the most competitive places in gaming, on par with gaming leagues such as League of Legends and Blizzard's own Starcraft 2.

I also object to the assertion that "making effort or gaining skill" is a waste of time. Speaking personally I have laboured hard to become a halfway decent PvPer, and I can track my improvement over the years in my personal PvP diary. I would really like to be able to see Gevlon's avatar in WoW so I can ascertain the levels of achievement and see his highest achieved ratings in PvP. This is not to mock or belittle his WoW "PvP credentials", but to rather point out that regardless of the level of achievement, you can always push higher, all the way to even competing at World Championship level if you are good enough. So even if Gevlon is a retired Gladiator (top 0.5% of the Battlegroup) or a disillusioned Arena Master (2.2k in all Arena brackets), there is always room for improvement (plus the chance to win a good chunk of money at the highest levels of play). I am not a good player, but each season I labour to be better, and my gradual improvement over the seasons point to the fact that i) there exists a discrete skill set which governs success and failure in the WoW PvP ladder; and ii) this skill set can be learned and acquired over time and practice. This skill set includes but is not exclusive of, competence with one own's character, knowledge of enemy classes, knowledge of team compositions, knowledge of counters, coordination of burst and CC, effective team communication and team synergy, amongst other things.

My theory of Gevlon, formulated from reading his posts, is that he was an avid and quite successful WoW raider until he got tired of how accessible raiding had become, and switched over to Eve. He also played WoW PvP, but did not find it to his liking - or rather, it was not enough to make him stay. There is nothing wrong this - after all we all play games we like for our own reasons - but his claims that there exists no competitive environment where performance is measurable is an outright misrepresentation of this sub-game of WoW. Unlike Gevlon I do not think there are "rational" or "correct" reasons to play - if someone wants to spend all their time fishing in WoW, then more power to him/her. This choice is as equally valid as the choice to PvP. However, if Gevlon claims that he left WoW "in hope of a competitive environment" then he did himself a disservice because such an environment already exists in Arenas and Rated BGs. His critiques of WoW (i.e. insignificant death penalties and easy rewards) are stronger when applied to random BGs and world PvP, but he makes no distinction between the differing modes of play and instead lumps them together in sweeping generalizations. I don't disagree that AFKing in random BGs will eventually earn you as much honor as actively playing, albeit at a much slower rate, nor that over time (especially with the 5.2 changes) everyone will be wearing the same PvP gear, regardless of skill level. If, however, your goals are not simply the acquisition of gear but rather pushing position on the PvP ladder and achieving PvP milestones (1550+, 1750+, 2000+ and 2200+), then you will find that WoW does indeed have one of the most competitive ladder tournaments in the gaming world, and one that rewards skill, strategy and teamwork. The acquisition of gear is merely a means to an end, and mere acquisition does not guarantee success. I merely point to the fact that many fully Malevolently geared players in Season 12 seem incapable of hitting 1550+ in either the Arena or Rated BG format. Gear differential can be decisive in lower levels of play, but as teams get higher on the ladder and meet equivalently geared opposition then it truly becomes a test of skill and teamwork. Class balance and team composition are also factors, but that is a different argument entirely - the pertinent point is that in WoW, measurable competition does exist, and winning and losing has a decisive effect on the standings of the players involved.

My argument has been solely focused on PvP ladder of WoW, but perhaps a similar argument can be made for Challenge dungeons and Heroic raids. Challenge dungeons offer a quantifiable way of measuring achievement by measuring best clear times on an individual, guild, realm and world level. A certain level of gear is necessary but there is a cap which effectively levels the playing field after a certain point. Heroic raids are the 3rd tier of raiding difficulty after LFR and Normal and present a harder level of difficulty for raiders looking for greater challenges. I will refrain from commenting further, however, as I no longer raid or do any kind of substantial PvE activity and I am unable to give the argument the depth it deserves. But at first glance there seems to be fertile ground for arguing that even in PvE there exist challenges in WoW that require preparation, skill and teamwork which would preclude "morons and slackers".

Should people be defeated in a game or should they always win? (Gevlon, 6 February 2012)

Gevlon asserts that everyone wins in WoW, and points to the low death penalty as proof of this. Winning and losing are contextual events. A single soccer game is meaningless (except to the teams involved). A single PvP encounter devoid of context, whether in Eve Online or WoW, is equally meaningless except to those involved, whose motives for playing may vary from simple boredom, personal validation, guild loyalty, personal spite, or any number of other possible reasons. In this sense, Gevlon is right when he says PvP in WoW is meaningless. But his argument applies equally to any kind of competitive play which is not rooted in a larger context. Once PvP becomes embedded in a larger context then it becomes bigger than itself, so to speak. In WoW what gives PvP context for me personally is the tournament ladder. What was a simple PvP melee suddenly has consequences - if you you win, you advance, if you lose, you drop. There is no "welfare" here, nor can everyone be considered "winners". If we apply Gevlon's own test - "while evaluating the game, ignore PvP status and seek if the player has a chance to lose or he can only win regardless of which buttons he pressed (Gevlon, 6 February 2013)" - then I can state without reservation that there are winners and losers in WoW. If I AFKed in a Rated BG my team's chances would be materially affected, we would probably lose, our rating would plummet, and I would probably never be able to play in a competitive team ever again. If I AFKed in a normal random BG there would be no consequences, except perhaps running the risk of getting banned for a few hours. It is the ladder which gives meaning to PvP in WoW. Rated and randoms are entirely different entities in the same way league matches and friendlies are in soccer, but Gevlon makes no distinction between them when he attacks WoW in his posts.

Eve Online appears to be an entirely different creature altogether. From what I have seen and read of Eve Online the context which frames PvP for a large number of players appears to be the continuing battle for dominance between differing player alliances in null-sec. This, I confess, is one of the greatest attractions of Eve Online. A persistent world where player actions have lasting impact - sounds awesome! I loved Dark Age of Camelot, and like many players, am still waiting for its "spiritual successor" (fail Warhammer Online fail). Gevlon's criticisms are based on this kind of persistent world PvP context. His critiques are right on the money when he compares Eve Online and WoW, i.e. the death penalty is very light, and open world PvP makes no meaningful changes to the persistent world. No matter how hard we try our guild can never burn down Orgrimmar (not that we haven't tried on numerous occasions) nor can I ever impose more than a 30s wait time on any enemy I "kill" in world PvP. What I object to, however, is the constant misrepresentation of the whole of WoW as a simple, skill-less game without consequence because of the "barrenness" of its world PvP. Arenas, Rated BGs. Challenge dungeons and Heroic raids pose non-trivial challenges to anyone unsatisfied with the easy content that Blizzard has to offer.

Gevlon says he wants a "competitive environment" where player performance is "measurable". If this was true he would have stayed in WoW and tried his hand at tournament ladder PvP. No, what he really wants is meaningful PvP embedded in a larger meta-game context - hence his criticism that "Eve will never be nerfed into a place where you can't kill another player... CCP is constantly nerfing it into a place where the other player won't care about the loss (Gevlon, 16 January 2013)." This is a type of game I would personally like to play as well, and what gives Eve Online much of its allure. There is no question that Eve Online has a richer and more complex world PvP environment than WoW. However, the fact that WoW has no meaningful open world PvP makes Gevlon dismiss it as a welfare game where "making effort and gaining skill is a waste of time". I hope that this post has, at the very least, dispelled some of these misconceptions by highlighting the areas of WoW which are, in reality, quite competitive zones of play where performance can be quantifiably measured and winning and losing has a material impact on the players. I agree with quite a few things Gevlon has to say about the low death penalties and the easy access to rewards, but these comments are only convincing when applied to the most accessible of Blizzard's content - namely, random BGs, LFG/LFR content and perhaps regular raid content. I cannot presume to speak for PvE content as I am no raider, but the feeling my team mates and I experience when we defeat higher rated teams in ranked PvP is one of the chief reasons why I remain a Blizzard subscriber. Conversely the numerous meltdowns I have witnessed on Skype when we lose a close Rated match are proof that contrary to Gevlons's assertion, not everyone wins in WoW. Participating in ranked PvP is as real as playing in chess or bridge tournaments, or in real life sports leagues like soccer or rugby, inasmuch as to how it affects people when it comes to winning and losing. It demands skill, teamwork and practice, and it most definitely is not a place for "morons and slackers".

This will hopefully be, given time and inclination, a series of articles about Rated BGs in WoW. This is my favourite part of WoW at the moment - I love the 10v10 format - I think it is the best team game in e-sports at the moment. I love Arena and Starcraft 2 as well, but they are more like, to use a sporting analogy, playing singles and doubles tennis. Eve Online and Planetside 2 have bigger battles, but the outcome of the battles are usually pre-determined before the combatants actually come to grips by the meta-game (i.e. the alliance/faction who can field greater numbers will usually win regardless of comparative skill levels). Rated BGs, for me, strike the right balance between scale and "fairness", which is why I am such a big fan. This post will focus on Capture the Flag (CTF) maps, namely Twin Peaks and Warsong Gulch, and will have links to the videos I have posted on YouTube of games at around the 1700+ level. This footage is from my personal point of view as a paladin healer, and will also feature the Skype communications recorded in-game. Our team hit 1800+ last weekend which is a milestone for many of us, and I thought that it would be fitting to commemorate the occasion by adding some commentary on composition/tactics and posting up some videos. As a caveat I do not pretend that our strategy is optimal, nor that we are the best players out there. Go to Skill-Capped if you want footage of the pros in action. What we are at the core are a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs, and this commentary is intended to be taken at that level.

Composition

Our team composition is pretty standard - 3 healers, 1 FC tank, and 6 DPS, with 1 TC (target caller) who is usually a DK due to their ability to Death Grip overextended enemies into bad positions. Our healers forms the core of our RBG team - they stay constant week in and week out, although we may occasionally bring in a 4th healer if our DPS seems particularly strong. Our healer group also happens to Arena together, albeit on different toons, so we have built up a strong synergy over the years. Since we started this year we have added 1-2 more regulars, plus we have 4-5 more people who play irregularly. My biggest problem is finding a competent TC who is comfortable in the job and can play on a regular basis. Ratsac, a great DK who was formerly on my server but has since transferred, is an excellent TC, but for a number of reasons, cannot play with us regularly. I often have to rope in a reluctant replacement, but ideally there should be a proven specialist in this role. One of the biggest problems I've found with trying to maintain a cohesive team is that people outgrow the team - that is, their personal rating hits a new bracket and they only want to play with teams that are on their level. Specifically, for example, once a player hits 1900+ or 2k+ they no longer want to play with 1800+ teams. My team has lost many good players this way, and it does cause some resentment to be used as a stepping stone and then casually discarded once a better offer comes along. However, I'm guilty of this myself so I cannot be critical of players who do the same. But it does create problems when trying to run consistent teams.

The wretched question I always seem to have to deal with is choosing people who are good PvPers over people I like. In Seasons 10 and 11 I played with people exclusive to my guild and server who, for the most part had no Arena achievements whatsoever, and we never ever beat a team rated 1600+ in over 300 games (our average MMR was 1400+ for most of the season). I became more ruthless with team selection in January this year by expanding recruitment across different PvP servers and imposing a 1550+ minimum Arena requirement. The net result was that our MMR immediately went up to 1700+, and we were able to get 1800+ after 5-6 weeks. The price however, was that I froze out many of the regulars I played with for over a year, and most of them eventually left the guild or transferred to different servers. I can't say I blame them - as I said, it is a real personal conundrum. I guess when people leave the team for higher ones it is simply a case of karma in action, so I should accept it as part of running Rateds.

Deployment and Strategy

We employ the "control" strategy in our CTF games - simply put, we try to establish control of midfield in order to create opportunities to kill the enemy FC before the enemy can do the same to ours. We deploy 9 players to the middle while we send our FC off by himself to secure the flag. The rationale for this is that we want all the healers in the middle in order to give our team the best possible chance of winning the big melee in the middle. Healers are force multipliers, for obvious reasons. A single healer by him/herself, however, is a sitting duck as either a focus or CC target - in big fights you should always try to have at least 2 healers so that they are able to support each other with dispels and heals.

If the FC is attacked my responsibility as a paladin healer is to break off from the middle, and assist him in bringing the flag home. Once we have flag in hand we stay together as a group (FC does not run back to cap point) and we then try to wipe the enemy, or force them to "split rez" - that is, wipe half their team so half are awaiting rez while the other half get steamrolled by our main group. Once mid is clear, or the enemies are scattered our group then splits into two - 8 rush the enemy base to get the kill, while the FC and myself fall back to the cap point and wait for the return. The offence cannot allow more than 2-3 opponents past their line to attack our FC, unless they are already within striking range of the enemy FC. In many ways it can be compared to a race - the team which is closer to the enemy FC has the advantage because at this point in the game both FCs are sitting at their cap points. If the FC and I are swamped by too many enemies then our offence has failed to sufficiently "control" the enemy (or the FC and I dawdled too long in the middle!).

I like the control strategy because it allows for improvised play, and it puts most of our team in the places where they are needed. In our formative games we experimented with different formations - in my first few WSGs we ran a 5 offence and 5 defence formation, for example. This formation sounded good on paper, but what actually happened was that the 5 people on defence ended up sitting at home base twiddling their thumbs while the other 5 on offence were massacred by 8-9 enemy players in midfield. Once our offence was down the enemy 8 attacked the remaining 5 on defence, wiping them and killing the FC, effectively defeating our team in detail. Keeping the team together, whether wiping the enemies in midfield, escorting the FC home, or defending the cap point, gives us the best possible chance of having numbers at the critical point on the battleground.

This first game is a 3-0 victory in WSG, and it illustrates our standard deployment in CTF games. As per usual our entire team deployed to the middle to wipe the enemy while our FC did a solitary run to the flag. The counter to this deployment is to leave 1-2 people to delay or kill our FC - that way, even if our team wipes the enemy our FC will be unable to bring the flag back to the cap point, and the enemy will have time to rez and regroup. This is exactly what happens in this game - our FC is jumped by a rogue, and I am forced to detach from the middle to assist. Once I got there I peeled the rogue off via CCs and we made our way out. In the meantime, the remainder of the team succeeded in wiping the opposition mid-field, and they converged on the hapless enemy FC who, isolated and alone, is mercilessly cut down away from the rest of his team. After this fast first cap the enemy seemed to be unable to reorganise, and they allowed the FC and I to run the field uncontested to get a second cap. The remainder of our team turtled at the flag point to deny the enemy the flag, and the enemy just ran into the kill zone in dribs and drabs, making them easy pickings for our grouped offence.

Quality Matters

Our team won all the major contacts in this game, and in my opinion it is in the contacts where the difference in quality of teams is most clearly manifested. Higher ranked teams, to put it simply, kill targets faster. This is due to better focus, better burst, better CD management, and better CC (which prevents healers from healing). I used to think that we could out-strategize our opposition, and in rare cases, it is possible - however, there is no substitute for the ability to smash the enemy at the points of contact. Regardless of how well planned any given strategy is, if your team can't kill theirs at the contacts then it will all come to nought. This the reason why good Arena players are good Rated BG players, and why high rated Arena players can turn the tide of games, simply because high rated Arena players are efficient player killers. Players armed with T2 weapons (rated 2.2k or higher) are especially brutal because their weapons allow them to burst harder. There is no real difference between the strategies our 1800+ team ran and the strategies my old 1400+ team ran in seasons 10 and 11. The decisive factor was that higher rated teams would wipe the floor of my old 1400+ team in the actual contacts. In CTF maps our midfield group would get wiped by teams 1600+ or more - in maps such as Arathi Basin, Battle for Gilneas and Eye of the Storm the people we deployed to take nodes would be repulsed and wiped by the corresponding enemy force deployed to contest the node. It is in the actual combats where the difference in team ratings can be most clearly perceived.

To illustrate this point, I have included a non-CTF map of a Gladiator team absolutely roflstomping our (almost!) 1800+ team. This whole team is composed of Gladiator level players (top 0.5% of their respective Battlegroups) armed with T2 weapons, and they absolutely annihilated us.

Note that they possess what are considered to be mandatory classes for good Rated composition - warlocks, mages and boomkins are all represented. There was also a weird incident where a cart started going backwards which I presume to be an exploit of some kind - however, it would not have made any difference to the outcome of the game so I didn't research the matter further. All I can say is that I'm glad that everyone can access T2 weapons in Season 13. As I've said in previous posts, good players deserve accolades for hitting 2.2k - they should not however, be given further equipment based advantages to slam lower ranked people down with. It is the antithesis of fair competition. I accept that even without T2 weapons this team would have beaten us handily due to the calibre of their team and their players - to not even have a chance because of gear disparity, however, is somewhat depressing (even if it was kind of fun in a twisted, masochistic kind of way).

Quantity Has A Quality All Of Its Own

The ratings of your players are not be all and all of Rated BGs however - there are ways to manipulate the odds in your team's favour. The biggest difference between Arenas and Rated BGs is that people can rez and get back into the fight, thereby introducing a numbers element into the game. This is yet another good reason to keep your team concentrated - they might have 2.2k players, but if they don't group up they can be picked off by your team. The smart use of rez vectors will also allow your team to bring numbers to bear on the opposition, even if they do outrank/outgear you. Graveyards (GY) should be considered reinforcement points, and are ideal places for regrouping or holding last stands.

The next game illustrates this point fairly well I think. In this next Twin Peaks game we fight a 1700+ team that has a 2.2k boomkin spearheading their attack. Both teams are closely matched, and both teams utilise their GYs to gain a numerical edge over the enemy at critical points in the game. Furthermore we isolate and target the boomkin at every opportunity to minimise his impact upon the game.

At the onset of the game the boomkin attempted to solo our FC by himself, which meant his firepower was kept away from our team at the initial contact. We deployed as per usual - 9 to mid, while our FC toddled off by himself to get the flag. When our FC called for assistance I broke away and peeled the boomkin while our FC grabbed the flag. Both FCs were able to reunite with their respective teams and we had a brief stalemate across the river. Our team focused or CCed the boomkin at every opportunity, but we were still pushed and were on the verge of wiping. In this situation our GY becomes our best friend - if the team looks like it is wiping there is no point fighting to the bitter end, as a complete wipe will open the door to a kill on our FC. We retreated to our GY, were able to regroup and stop the enemy push, and then sent our offence to attempt to kill the enemy FC.

Unfortunately the enemy team was also quite canny, and they too used their GY to regroup and to wipe our offence. The FC and I retreated to our GY to consolidate with our rezzing O, and we made a stand at the bottom of the hill near our back GY to await the enemy counter. We sent two people to try and kill the enemy FC while the rest of the team turtled around our FC. We were able to repel the enemy attack, and we then sent the rest of the team to attack the enemy FC while all the healers turtled around our FC. Our O was able to drop the FC, and we secured a cap despite a late push by the enemy. At this point of the game the boomkin made an amazing dash with the flag which almost culminated in a cap. Only a last ditch effort by Lelle to snatch the flag at the last minute saved the day - even then we had our hands full while we tried to peel the enemy away from her. We ended up turtling inside one of the houses on the map, and we ran down the clock to secure the win.

Final Thoughts

Rated BGs are lots of fun, and hopefully this post and the accompanying videos impart some of that feeling. Definitely my favourite part of WoW at the moment, the key things I have learnt in my CTF Rated experience to date are i) individual player quality matters when pushing rating; ii) keeping the team concentrated is the key to success; and iii) smart use of GY vectors can allow your team to turn the tide in losing engagements. There are many things I can still learn and fine tune, and hopefully these things I can share at a later date when I get better at this caper. For those people who have never done Rateds before, I would encourage them to try them out. Season 13 awards CP for losing games now, so it won't always be wasted time - furthermore capping via Rateds will accelerate you faster to the 27k aggregate requirement for the T2 weapons this season. I know I went on and on about how high rated players are necessary to do well, but this is only true if you are pushing rating on the ladder. I had just as much fun playing with my 1400+ team in seasons 10 and 11 as I do now with my current team - in the end thought, I made a choice based on what I wanted to do, and had to accept the consequences. Nonetheless I've been in some higher rated PuGs on PvP servers where players have been rude, idiotic or unpleasant, something which never happened when I played in my old team. In the end, rating or skill or proficiency in a game means nothing at all, unless you are one of the very few that makes it their livelihood or profession. Play is play, and no one governs how we play except ourselves. I think RBGs are fun, and they satisfy a competitive streak in me which makes me want to push higher and higher - I would heartily recommend them to anyone who is looking for a good team e-sports to fritter away their leisure hours.

The war in Fountain continues to rage, and as part of my daily blog consumption I avidly pore over the usual sites looking for news of the latest developments. I read posts written by representatives of all the big players - CFC, TEST and N3 - as well as commentary provided by "neutral" observers. I watch Mad Ani's live stream on Twitch when I hear of big battles taking place, and surf YouTube looking for footage of major events. The amount of flame wars and creative output generated by this conflict is staggering. This is quite remarkable given that Fountain isn't even a real place, nor do I play EVE, the MMORPG which hosts the virtual world of New Eden where Fountain is located. I've played the trial twice, subscribed once, unsubscribed after a couple of months and haven't been back since. Nonetheless, the amount of human participation and buy-in into what amounts to a virtual consensual conflict really fascinates me. It sounds ridiculous - I tried to communicate this to friends of mine who don't play games and all I got for my efforts were indulgent smiles ("Oh, that's nice...") and looks of baffled incomprehension ("What the hell is he talking about now?"). EVE interests me because it appears to me - as an outsider looking in - as meaningful world PvP done right.

Simple PvP

I classify PvP into three categories - simple PvP which consists of the core game mechanics, followed by ladder/tournament PvP, and finally open world PvP. Simple, ladder/tournament, world - that's the typology I am going to run with today. I also make the analogy that simple PvP is similar to duels, ladder PvP is like sport, and world PvP is akin to war. The first two categories require fairness as an absolute requirement - the latter does not.

Simple PvP is a very broad definition, and encompasses almost any game that involves you and a human opponent. The key thing about simple PvP is that it is chiefly concerned with the core mechanics of the game which come into play when playing against another player. These mechanics are easy to identify in games which are completely PvP orientated- in games which encompass PvE and PvP elements however, only the PvP elements matter. In WoW Lay On Hands is irrelevant to me as a paladin healer because I am unable to use it in Arenas or Rated BGs. Same with Army of the Dead for a DK, for the same reasons. For many people the core game is enough. People can and will play games for the sake of the game itself, without any need to frame PvP in a deeper context. Thousands of books have been written about the elegance of chess, and numerous analyses have been written on opening, midgame and endgame tactics. People spend hours playing Counterstrike, Team Fortress 2 and numerous other shooters over and over again against random strangers. Jamie Madigan writes that games satisfy three psychological needs, namely competence, autonomy and relatedness. Whatever reason people have for doing so is irrelevant - the empirical data is there that for some people, the core game is enough to satisfy them without imposing further meta-gaming elements.

Speaking for myself personally, however, such activity becomes repetitive and meaningless over time - I cannot play Chivalry and Team Fortress 2 for more than an hour or two without getting bored. It should also be noted that core game mechanics can be shallow or deep, and I find that my attention span is held longer by strategy titles as opposed to FPS shooters. I have nothing against FPS games, it is just a personal preference. With any type of game, however, I will eventually need to go out and measure myself against the player pool, and that means playing ranked games in ladder PvP.

Ladder/Tournament PvP

I'm a big fan of ladder-based PvP. I'm an avid Starcraft 2 player, and I play Arenas and Rated BGs almost exclusively in WoW. My current goal in both formats is to eventually break the 2k plateau, and I'm pleased with my progress from a 1300+ newbie in Season 10 to a relative veteran at 1900+ in Season 13. Recently however I have found that ladder-based PvP is losing its luster for me. I have not played Rated BGs at all for the last three weeks. Part of that is simple burn-out - our team goal in Season 13 was 1900+, and we blitzed to that in the early days of the season. Since that time we have been banging our heads at the 2k wall, and slowly losing players to attrition as other things begin to occupy their time. It is slowly dawning on me that this might be as good as I get, and if so, then it might be worthwhile to move on to other things. I also end up being raid leader in most Rateds I organize (simply because nobody else wants the responsibility) and it takes a toll over time. Give me an objective to do and I'll do my utmost to complete it. Sometimes that's all I want to do, and that's not what I usually end up doing most nights we play.

Aside from burn-out I have also come to a more fundamental conclusion that ladder PvP is not the best way to implement PvP in an MMO because it fails to take advantage of the unique opportunities that MMOs can offer. Ladder competition is competitive and fun, and it can be a great adjunct to the MMO if implemented well - it's just that the MMO part is completely irrelevant. The persistent world might as well not be there for all the impact it has on the players who are only interested in PvP. As long as the core game is good there is no need to anchor it to a persistent world to make it work. The only real relevance the world has is how it affects performance within the actual core PvP game itself. The only times you will see a hardcore PvPer play PvE in WoW is when theorycrafting has illustrated that a particular raid weapon or trinket will provide a significant boost in PvP performance. Then you will see them move heaven and earth trying to acquire that particular item (feral druids and rogues raiding to acquire the Vial of Shadows during Cataclysm comes to mind). In addition PvPers still need to enchant and gem their gear, and this keeps them somewhat connected to the persistent world. There are people on the Battlenet forums petitioning for gems and enchants to become purchasable by Honor. If this was implemented this would be the final disconnect between PvP and PvE in WoW - you would no longer ever need to set foot in Azeroth ever again.

You could make the argument that the history of WoW since the introduction of Arenas has been an attempt to balance these two inherently irreconcilable aspects of PvE and PvP. Back in 2009 Rob Pardo of Blizzard stated that the introduction of Arenas was the single biggest mistake in WoW's history, and with good reason. Ladder PvP has taken on a life of its own, however, and Blizzard have made the best out of a bad job by creating a fairly robust, fast paced and enjoyable competition in both the Arena and Rated BG formats. Regardless of this, there are now two separate types of gear, two separate types of gear progression, and constant rebalancing is required to make sure that class abilities do not end up becoming overpowered in either PvE or PvP. PvE and ladder PvP are completely disconnected in WoW - whatever linkages exist are completely artificial and are placed there by developers in a vain attempt to keep the game cohesive. Because ladder PvP is so disconnected from the world it purportedly inhabits I have found myself growing further and further apart from the MMO world which spawned my avatar. Most of my time online in spent inside the OQueue add-on interface looking for teams and players to queue with for Rated BGs. I don't need my guild - I don't even need my realm, especially with cross-realm Arenas being implemented in 5.4 - more importantly, I don't need the land of Azeroth anymore. You could split the game into two and me and all the PvPers I know would quite happily continue playing the ladder PvP game, which would become a type of MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) in the same category as League of Legends and DOTA 2.

World PvP

There is a better way to anchor PvP to the persistent world, and that is by taking advantage of the unique opportunities MMOs offer for a type of PvP which is not grounded in the conventions of traditional gameplay. World PvP is a completely different entity from ladder-based or tournament style PvP, with the foremost difference being that while it is absolutely essential that ladder tournaments are as fair as possible, world PvP does not have to be. World PvP is not fair - ganking or being double or triple teamed, even dogpiled, are acceptable hazards, and rather than complaining about it, the onus is on you to obtain strategic advantages to avoid being put in these types of situations or to withdraw if the odds are not in your favor. Ladder PvP, on the other hand, tries to pit equal teams against each other in order to advance in the rankings. World PvP is continuous, around the clock and can occur anywhere, while ladder PvP is separated into discrete matches of fixed duration which are held in specially "balanced" venues. Ladder PvP is a zero sum game - there are clear winners and losers, and the relative standings of all involved can be easily ascertained by looking at the rankings. World PvP is not a zero sum game - players can form coalitions for mutual gain, and winning and losing is quantified not by individual player achievements but rather by strategic gains made by factions/coalitions. It is also difficult to find an accurate metric to measure player performance in world PvP. Achievements in ladder PvP are easily measurable because they occur in balanced environments. Fights in world PvP, however, are subject to a host of wildly fluctuating variables which significantly affect the outcome. I don't care if you are a Gladiator (top 0.5% of the bell curve) in WoW, if I find you with my hunter when all your CDs are down and mine are up, you are going to go down. Especially if I have two of my buddies with me. If I met the same Gladiator in an Arena match up in a 3s match, however, he/she would undoubtedly stomp our merry band into the turf. Trying to measure performance in world PvP is akin to boxing afficianados comparing fighters from different eras - unless there was a way for get them in the ring and duke it out the result will always be hypothetical. The point is, world PvP will never be fair the way ladder/tournament PvP should be.

Traditional PvP appeals to the part of all of us which believes in the chivalric ideal of equal combat, and translates well into e-sports. They appeal to the part of our ego which states that all things being equal, I can take you (regardless of all evidence to the contrary!). World PvP is more like the real world, which can be cruel and unforgiving and where the industrial might of large impersonal alliances can grind down even the most skilled of players through sheer weight of numbers and material. Clearly there are big differences between world PvP and ladder PvP, and it is important to always keep in mind these distinctions when discussing both types of gameplay. Gevlon's declaration that "Eve can be won" with the One Empire is an attempt to postulate a zero sum solution to non-zero sum equation. Similarly, Gevlon's manipulation of kill mail in EVE shows the difficulty in finding an impartial and accurate metric of measuring player performance in world PvP. Both these cases illustrate a confusion in levels, an attempt to impose aspects of ladder-based PvP gameplay which don't need to exist in world PvP. Only the big picture matters.

Clearly world PvP as defined above is not for everyone and there are different skill sets at work. In ladder-based PvP you have to be good at the core game to excel - in world PvP it is the meta-game which is important. The ability to organize large networks of like-minded players is arguably more important than individual player ability when it comes to world PvP. Tobold argues that non-consensual PvP is a niche market and I don't disagree. I disagree, however, with the assertion that world PvP has to be fair to be enjoyable. The best world PvP I ever played was with the browser game called Evony. Evony is notorious for its dodgy advertisements, is a poor clone of better empire building games, and is blatantly pay to win. I had no intention of playing it long term, except for the fact that my little fledgling empire was repeatedly plundered over and over again by a guy called dragRe. Being the stubborn little shit that I am, I refused to move, endured plunder after plunder and reached out to other people around my area. To cut a long story short, we formed a coalition, helped each other become strong, and eventually drove dragRe out of the region. We became the dominant alliance and many a battle was fought as we strove to expand and defend our territories. We learned the value of diplomacy and espionage. We also fell in a heap when we took on a coalition too powerful for us. In the end it didn't matter - in the process we created social bonds the likes of which I have not replicated in WoW. We trusted each other to watch each other's empires while we were offline. It is strange to think that I learned to trust strangers on the Internet enough to give them my login and password so that they could defend my territories if attacked, and vice versa. I no longer play Evony, but if these guys are out there - Aotearoa, ShortSleeves, mrkanthony, stoma and co. - I salute you and wish you well.

Open world PvP opens up so many gaming elements which cannot be found in the traditional or the ladder based format precisely because it isn't fair. If you have to be fair, then you have to fight your own battles. If you have to be fair, you can't negotiate settlements or compromises, or form coalitions to dominate or avoid being dominated by other players or factions. If you have to be fair, you cannot employ underhanded tactics like espionage and sedition and infiltrate enemy alliances. If you have to be fair, you can't run away to fight another day, because the issue has to be decided right now. If you have to be fair, you can't be a bully - conversely, you are also not given the chance to stand up to bullies. Most importantly, however, is that If you have to be fair, then your friends don't matter at all, because they can never help you. The biggest regret I have with becoming a hardcore WoW PvPer is that it made my guildies and the persistent world irrelevant. In the early days of BC I would quite happily run around with my guildies to defend the honour of the Alliance wherever we could. Nowadays it's all about minimum Arena achievements, current rating and what role you bring to the Rated BG team. Because many people I grew up in WoW with were just casual PvPers at best, I grew more and more alienated from them the more I became immersed in ladder PvP. Pushing for rating and playing with friends only works if everyone is at the same level - otherwise someone is going to get left behind. In world PvP, however, your friends become more important than ever, simply because quantity is a tangible advantage in "unfair" environments. It is for this reason that world PvP is more social than traditional PvP, because everyone matters, not just the purported "elite". Traditional PvP is about "I", while world PvP should be about "we".

Meaningful World PvP

Many people will disagree with my definition of world PvP. It is more my definition of what world PvP should be about, rather than a description of what actually constitutes world PvP in existing games. For me meaningful world PvP is player versus player activity which has lasting repercussions for the players and the persistent virtual world in which they inhabit. EVE Online displays many characteristics which I consider to be essential for a good world PvP game. My major problem with WoW world PvP is that while world PvP does have an impact on player behaviour, it has no significant effect on Azeroth itself. Azeroth is completely oblivious to the conflict between the Alliance and Horde, regardless of what the lore says, and any kind of alteration to the landscape comes in the form of deus ex machina intervention by the developers. Stormwind remains perpetually owned by the Alliance regardless of how many times the Horde come pillaging through. You can never "kill" the leaders of the Horde - they're only mostly dead, and they'll shake it off and come back after a short interval. The final raid of the Pandaria expansion will be a raid on Orgrimmar itself. I have news for you, Blizzard - we've already raided Orgrimmar a number of times and "killed" Garrosh. The bastard just won't stay down for some reason.

WoW has tried to make world PvP more significant by adding strategic objectives which confer some type of benefit to the faction holding them. So far to date however these strategic overlays have been superficial (in the form of region wide buffs), counterintuitive (i.e. the reward for controlling Wintergrasp and Tol Barad is the opportunity to do PvE in the form of more dailies and/or raids) and fleeting (the objectives in Silithus and the Eastern Plaguelands have long since been forgotten). EVE Online by contrast has an amazingly rich meta-game which can be attested to by the significant number of player generated content emerging from it. The battle for Fountain is tremendously interesting, and is made more so because sovereignty can change hands. The landscape of New Eden is constantly being fought over and reshaped by the players themselves, not by developers who think that an earth-shattering dragon would make a cool end game boss. World PvP is meaningful in EVE. By contrast, no one (except the players involved) gives a rats arse about what happens in the wilds of Azeroth. Regardless of what the players do, that world remains changeless, immutable and ultimately meaningless.

I started playing WoW with a tight circle of friends and family, and this circle expanded to include online friends and guildies. Their continued presence in Azeroth was the main reason I played WoW. Sometime during my hunt for higher and higher ratings I lost sight of that. My sister loves PvP as much as I do, but the day she said I should find another partner because she wasn't good enough to compete at the bracket we were playing in was the day I realized that I had started playing for the wrong reasons. Meaningful in games is not the same as meaningful in real life. So nowadays I want to be able to play a MMO PvP game which can include everyone regardless of ability, where everyone's contribution, regardless of size, is important. I want to identify ourselves with a faction of our choosing, and fight the good fight against all comers. I want our tribe to alter the persistent world, and for our skirmishes to matter for our faction and for our enemies. I want to know my enemy and build rivalries and vendettas, and then one day laugh and reminisce about it on shared forums. I want to indulge in skullduggery and diplomacy. I want to be able to rejoice in our shared victories, and commiserate with each other in our bitterest defeats. I want big fights, small fights, overwhelming victories and doomed last stands. In short, I want meaningful world PvP.

As stated in an earlier post I am a big fan of the player driven conflict and emergent story unfolding on EVE Online between the forces of CFC and TEST. Surfing through the forums and various blogs I got wind of a massive conflict building in 6VDT-H and tuned in to Mad Ani's Live Twitch stream. I went to bed as CFC forces began to muster in the system, and woke up to see the battle in full swing on the stream. For the next 4-5 hours I watched as CFC overwhelmed the TEST forces, who in the eyes of this neophyte appeared outnumbered and outgunned, but seemed determined to fight to the last ship. CFC has prevailed in the largest online battle in the history of EVE, and perhaps in the history of gaming. At its peak there were over 4000 players in the system, and this number stayed consistently in the high 3000s for most of the battle. This figure only reflects the number of players within the system during the battle - it did not count reinforcements or players waiting outside the system waiting to get into the fight. According to the EVE Battle Summary Doctor (dog-net.org), 5754 players took part in the battle, with CFC losing 283 ships and TEST 1349.

As a spectacle it left much to be desired - to the uninitiated it comprised of a bunch of orange dots surrounded by a swarm of angry red dots moving in super slow motion thanks to time dilation. I didn't watch the stream as much as I just left it to play out in the background, occasionally checking in to see if there were any changes to the distribution of the dots. Slowly but surely all the red dots began to disappear, and it became clear that this was an overwhelming CFC victory. The historical analogy that came to my mind was the US fleet steaming to Okinawa and the Japanese throwing their ragtag and makeshift kokusai squadrons (kamikazes) at them in a desperate but ultimately futile gesture. Gevlon from TEST stated that there were 1400 Test pilots in the system with more on the sidelines waiting to bridge in (but unable to due to the system cap), which presumably meant 2600 pilots for the CFC. He made the comment that CFC bridging in first was decisive, as it prevented TEST from ever engaging the CFC fleet on a one on one basis. This was borne out by my observation of the events - last night I watched the CFC fleet massing around the station, then woke up this morning to see TEST warp in fleet after fleet and get ground to dust. The CFC forces were prepared and organised and already in formation by the time TEST began their attack, and they repelled TEST's attacks fairly comfortably. When the battle was clearly lost TEST regrouped for one more final suicide charge, much to the surprise of CFC (an account written by Vily, a Megathron CFC FC can be found here) but not to those gallant folk at TEST, who had come here to make a statement - the battle for Fountain was lost, but they were going to make a stand anyway.

Mad Ani's live stream on Twitch.

TEST are pulling out of their staging area in Karan and relocating back to NOL in Delve. CFC has won the battle for Fountain. I feel sympathy for TEST - the last month has seen them deserted by their allies and ripped off from within by one of their own. Nonetheless that's the nature of the game, and they have to be given kudos for showing up in such numbers and going out the way they did. Whether or not EVE is your cup of tea this battle is a milestone in the history of MMOs. As for CFC, they appear well led, super organised and on top of the meta game. No one will probably know the full details of the behind the scene machinations, but the way the campaign was conducted seemed like a classic case of divide and conquer. They were surprised by the massive dogpile which greeted them when they first rolled into Fountain, but recovered well and were able to isolate TEST from their allies who stood with them in the opening battle of the Fountain War. At the beginning of the war TEST stood with Black Legion, Pandemic Legion and NC3 coalition, and it seemed like this would become the mother of all EVE wars. However since then so many things have occurred which favour the CFC that you start to wonder whether they are the luckiest coalition in this war, or perhaps the most adept at back room dealing. They secured their northern border by paying off the Black Legion. Black Legion then turned on Pandemic Legion by ambushing a fleet of super carriers with the help of an insider. The N3 coalition, by far the biggest equaliser in TEST's corner due to their powerful capital fleet, was distracted by another act of corporate espionage which led to S2N and Nulli Legio (members of N3) being disbanded and the theft of 250-400 billion ISK. N3 made an amazing recovery in recovering the vast majority of the lost systems within 24 hours, but was then forced to choose between two fronts this month as Solar Fleet (a.k.a. the Russians - I love how this game creates blocs along national lines) rumbled in from the east. In the end N3 withdrew their capital ships, and this proved decisive as system after system tumbled to the CFC advance. Finally there was also the theft of 130 billion ISK worth of logistics by a disgruntled TEST director only a few days ago, and all in all, all these things taken together represent a litany of woes for TEST. Whether or not CFC have had a hand in all these developments will remain a mystery I suppose, but it's important to note that while TEST and its allies have had their hands full during this whole war, CFC has remained solid, free from drama and quite formidable.

The war in Fountain has been an amazing spectacle, and for me it illustrates MMO world PvP at its best. Not the battles themselves as such, which quite frankly appeared slow and unresponsive and about as exciting as watching paint dry, but the meta-game elements which do much to influence the outcome of these battles before the factions come to grips with one another. I enjoy reading the blogs, keeping up to date with major developments, watching/listening to Mad Ani's stream, and looking at the changing map of New Eden. It's a great story too, and I applaud all the members of TEST for showing up and breaking records and showing everyone that MMORPGs are not always about winning. I was rooting for TEST chiefly because they were the underdogs, and because they were so badly outmanoeuvred in the meta-game, losing all their allies like dominoes to one crisis after another. Alas it was not to be, but the good thing is that it's not over - TEST will retreat and reorganise and hopefully come back stronger than ever. As a consolation to TEST some hours after the battle they were able to chance on a lax CFC Titan in 6VDT-H (calculated to command a price tag in excess of 120 billion ISK or $7600 US in real money terms in 2010) and destroy it, much to the astonishment of the folks watching the live stream at the time. While it probably won't equal the amount of ISK destroyed by CFC in today's battle, it will go a long way towards balancing the ledger, and also provide some cold comfort in the hearts of some embittered TEST pilots. I'm also looking forward to seeing the developments in null sec politics given that N3 in their State of the Coalition dated July 11 stated quite explicitly that the purpose of their coalition was to fight the CFC. The CFC remains the leading hegemony in null sec, and based on how clinically they won the battle for Fountain looks poised to maintain their dominance for a long time to come.

With patch 5.4 just around the corner this might be an opportune time to review some of the upcoming changes to WoW PvP, as well as to briefly summarize the changes that have been implemented in PvP from 5.2 to the present. The information in this post should be correct at the time of writing, but please keep in mind that 5.4 is still in PTR and is liable to change at any time. I have also refrained from commenting on class balance changes, instead focusing on the overall changes that will impact all players in the next patch.

PvP Changes in 5.2 and 5.3

Here is a list of the changes that have occurred in patches 5.2 and 5.3:

5.2

Battleground normalization at lower brackets;

Conquest gear purchasable with Honor after 27k aggregate reached;

Conquest Points awarded for losing Rated BGs;

Removal of 2.2k T2 weapons.

5.3

Flag Running Damage Debuffs for DPS (20%) and Tank (50%) specs;

Bloody Dancing Steel/Spirit of Conquest PvP Enchants;

iLevel Caps in Arenas and Rated BGs;

Map Alterations (Dalaran Arena and EOTS starting zone);

New Arena (Shado-Pan Arena);

New Battleground (Deepwind Gorge);

PvP Power on gems reduced by 50%;

PvP Power Nerf - 265 increased to 400 for 1% extra damage;

Resilience Removed From PvP Items and made baseline.

Theodorius explodes in a ball of light after unleashing his Mega Super Duper Heal spell in a Rated BG. Actually, it was just my Guardian going out with a bang.

PvP Changes in 5.4

Abolition of Arena Teams

I like this change, although it makes me sad to bid a fond farewell to some of my long running Arena teams and their increasingly ridiculous names. Upsides include a true region wide competition - no more artificial distinctions between Battlegroups, and the associated elitism that goes on with it. Arena titles will become a much more prized achievement, because in effect you will be playing against everyone now. Gladiator no longer means the top 0.5% of the Battlegroup - it means the top 0.5% of the region. Whatever title players win at the end of this season reflects their standing against the whole of the region - US/Oceanic (these are combined), Europe, South America or China. Regardless of whatever title one gets - Gladiator (0.5%), Duelist (0.5-3%), Rival (3-10%) and Challenger (10-35%) - it is nice to know that this bell curve incorporates everyone in region and is a true reflection of where you are compared to everyone else.

On a related note, Blizzard's proposal for rating inflation in 5.2 was never implemented, probably because Blizzard was already tinkering with removing Arena teams altogether at this point and this change would have been redundant down the line. The issue that proposal was trying to address, however, has not gone away - namely, rating camping at high levels of the ladder, in which high rated players blitz rating in the early weeks and stay there for the remainder of the season. This leads me to think that either the blitzing has gone away since T2 weapons were removed, or that they might implement some kind of rating inflation in the future for personal ratings. Perhaps it has become a non-issue, and that a region wide competition will discourage high rating camping due to the increased competition for top spots.

Arena Time Limits

OK I admit that I have been an asshat in 2s games on a number of occasions. There have been times when I've lost my partner and rather than bowing out gracefully I have looked at the enemy DPS and said to myself, "This guy can't kill me." I would then proceed to run around and be a total tosser and play for a draw until the 45 (now 25) minute timer expired. Both teams would lose points, and I would have wasted both teams' time. But I did deny the opposition any points for winning. Ha!

Karma is a bitch however, and once I was on the receiving end of this type of treatment while grinding games I took a long hard look at myself and said, "This is immature behaviour unworthy of a grown adult." Actually, it was more like, "Dang! This sucks and it's wasting my time. Just quit dude, you're going to lose points regardless - you're just being spiteful! I would never do anything like that...oh, wait a minute..."

Suitably enlightened I learned to lose with a modicum of grace, and after Season 11 or thereabouts once my partner died I would bow out quickly. Usually. If the DPS was bad I might hang around for a couple of minutes just to prove a point (what can I say, I'm exceedingly shallow). I would tank the DPS's burst, then walk out into the open, wave farewell and quit as if to say, "Now look lads - you didn't beat me, OK? I am leaving on my own accord. I know, I know, it is a magnanimous gesture and you should /salute me or something for it. Come on now, just give me a wave or something... Come on... Look, I'm not leaving until you give me some kind of emote..."

Not sure why I bothered really, because if the enemy could talk they would say, "Good for you. mate, you have proven that you can keep your healer alive against a single DPS, which is how Blizzard has actually designed the current game. Now if you could keep your DPS partner alive you might actually get higher ratings...?" More likely thought they would just say, "Just f***ing quit you f***ing baddie, stop wasting our f***ing time you f***ing f***head."

This one screenshot tells you how this particular Arena game is going to end. The priest has gambled and lost by running out into the open to fear Theo. It was a bad gamble - his feral partner is not putting any pressure on Ratsac who is at full health, and Theo still has his trinket which he uses to break the CC. Ratsac is red and angry and bursting, and feral is below 50% health. Priest is out in the open, and Psychic Fear is now on CD. Theo's Repentance is off CD and ready. Priest now has 1.5 s (the time it takes to cast a Repentance) to cast something to top up his partner, because after that he will eat a Repentance, followed up by a Blinding Light. GG if the priest has no trinket, because this means a 14 s lockout. Even if he trinkets, Theo will stand on top of him and interrupt any cast over time spells. The only thing that can save his partner now is if he still has major defensive CDs like Barkskin, instant Healing Touch, Might of Ursoc or Survival Instincts off CD.

Anyway... not everyone has reached this exalted state of maturity I currently display, and so Blizzard has wisely enforced a 15 minute time limit on Arena matches. After 15 minutes a buff will be awarded to the team which i) has the most number of players remaining; or ii) has had the best kill attempt on an enemy player (i.e. reduced an opposition player's health the lowest). At first glance I thought this would be a moderately strong buff that would give a decent but not insurmountable advantage to the team which had fulfilled either of these two conditions, but when I went poking around the Internet to gauge the strength of the buff I found that it was not so much a buff as opposed to, in the words of Blizzard's lead PvP designer Holinka, a match ender. The Crowd Chose You buff gives you 1000% extra damage, decreases all damage taken by 100%, and allows you to see stealthed units. I don't know for certain if this version of the buff is the one that will become live, but as it stands the presence of this buff creates a hard (not soft) time limit of 15 minutes for Arena matches as once your team receives the buff you can no longer die and it's just a formality wiping up the opposition. I would have much preferred a moderately strong buff to ensure a result but also allow people the chance to claw a win back even if they failed to get the buff.

There are a number of implications for this. Firstly, healer/tank teams might become competitive if the healers involved can maintain high health pools until the 15 minute limit has been reached. This is not as easy as it sounds in PvP, where health is spiking crazily all the time, but it is possible. A healer or tank with 1000% damage buff will dispatch enemies with ease. On the flip side, healer teams shouldn't be able to put out that much burst in return, so in the end I believe this will be a non-issue.

The second implication is that I think this change favors super burst classes, especially mage and shadow priest teams which use the Deep Freeze/Devouring Plague combo. Mages especially line up their burst with their team mates when their Deep Freeze comes out, and fights with this class revolve around syncing your defensive CDs every 30 s or so when they try to Deep you down with their team mates. Syncing burst is what every Arena team worth their salt should be doing too, anyway, so perhaps this too, is a non-issue. It's just that some classes burst a little bit better than others, so they might be able to get better shots at getting the buff. This is not an issue where health pools are big enough to allow healers to recover, but if the game becomes all about who gets the health pools down the lowest, then naturally the better bursters receive the advantage.

A third implication is that it could force healers to play less conservatively to keep health pools up as high as possible and to use major CDs earlier than they would have in earlier incarnations of the game. When all is said and done however, all this change means is that Arena games are 15 minutes long in 5.4 as opposed to 25 minutes (which is infinitely better than 45 minutes which was the time limit in Season 10). The strategy is just to land a kill and win within this time frame. It opens up a new strategy which in effect involves holding out for 15 minutes and winning the buff by keeping your health higher than the other team, but this is far riskier and takes much more work than the classic Arena strategy of well, erm, kill one of the other dudes. The classic strategy of syncing burst and CC to maintain pressure and force trinkets and CDs in order to eventually land kills will remain the mainstay of Arena gameplay in 5.4.

I'm still going to try holy paladin, resto druid and disc priest combo however. As I said, I'm exceedingly shallow.

Cross Realm Arenas and Connected Realms

This is huge. This is awesome. I have lost so many good Arena team mates when they left my realm for greener pastures. Luckily the tides of WoW development have brought cross realm Arenas to the barren wasteland that is the Thorium Brotherhood, and thanks to the Connected Realms there hopefully will be more players to pick fights with in world PvP. This is an amazing quality of life change for PvPers, and I applaud Blizzard for it.

Increased CP Rewards for Random BGs

Anything which makes the acquisition of PvP gear easier is also another good quality of life change. I'm almost at the point where I would be happy if they gave PvP gear out for free to everyone, just completely even out the playing field, and let pure gameplay decide. People who still rely on gear differential to win matches are just sad, or simply not enlightened yet. On the lighter side, I couldn't help but laugh at some OQueue advertisements I saw recently (this is a social add-on which allows people to advertise and organise Rated BG teams cross-server) which stated, "No Skill No Vent No Skype No Minimum Rating needed - just play till we get the cap". As comical as this is, acquiring the cap is a necessary evil, and the real game doesn't actually start until people start playing for rating. Increasing the cap makes it fractionally easier to grind the necessary points each week, and so again, this is a good change.

Strand of the Ancient Changes

No more ramming, and only one Demolisher per spawn point, but bombs hit significantly harder. This is an effort to make this BG more about the players and less about the demos. The optimal strategy for this BG has always been grouping demos and attacking gates simultaneously. The biggest criticism of SOTA has been that your character becomes irrelevant - all the time you spent learning your class becomes secondary to using these vehicles correctly. To be fair, using your character to slow and focus down demos were crucial in defense , but this change pulls the gameplay back towards the characters and away from a Warcraft style Tonka truck demolition derby. Regardless, this doesn't affect Rated play as this BG is not part of the rotation at this point, but perhaps Blizzard is looking to include it in a future date depending on how these changes pan out.

Final Thoughts

I think MoP has been a great expansion for WoW PvP to date. I have criticized WoW open world PvP as lacking luster and meaning in other posts, but the ladder competition remains robust, competitive and fairly well balanced. 5.4 will in all likelihood be the final patch for the MoP version of WoW PvP, and looking back it can be said that this expansion will be remembered for a host of quality of life changes for all PvPers. In MoP the competition became fairer (no more T2 weapons), broader (abolition of Arena teams and Battlegroups/cross realm Arena) and more accessible (resilience now baseline/easier HP and CP grinds).

For me personally warlocks will be my enduring memory of MoP. OP bastards. In all fairness warlock love was overdue, and locks should be thankful that they had such fervent and articulate advocates in Cynwise and Xelnath who were able to influence Blizzard design so dramatically. My best team mates have been warlocks, even before they were the dominant class of the expansion. In Season 10 I played hundreds of 45 minute games with my team mate Coronaxtra, and we used to win by gradually wearing down the opposition mana pool over the course of the game. I'm just sad that he quit before Season 11 started, because he would have had a ball with the new tools warlocks received in MoP. Locks in Season 11 have excellent burst, excellent CC and defensive CDs to rival tanking specs. I've tried to refrain from commenting on class balance, but I definitely think that locks were the PvP class of the expansion. Just my 2 cents.

Digression over - here's to a great and glorious Season 14 to end Mists of Pandaria!

Note: This post was originally a reply to a discussion on Hypercriticism. I have tried to clean it up and reorganize it so it makes better sense, but the argument is essentially the same. I have changed my views slightly thanks to engaging other bloggers like Doone and Milady, but this is ultimately a good thing.

My first post in this series made a crude typology outlining the differences between simple, ladder and world PvP. I would like to further develop this argument by discussing the issue of asymmetry and fairness in persistent worlds. For the sake of clarity, a few definitions are in order. I will be discussing PvP in the context of persistent virtual worlds as can be found in MMOs such as WoW, EVE Online, Planetside 2, Darkfall and DAOC. I am not discussing PvP found in balanced, controlled and instanced environments which reset once a match is concluded (i.e. league matches in League of Legends, Starcraft 2, and WoW Arena/Rated BGs). A key feature of world PvP is the persistence of the world, which has a number of implications for balance. I define asymmetry as the imbalance of power which exists between players in MMO worlds based on variables such as character level, player skill, gear, time invested, social-in game affiliations and so on.

Fairness is much more difficult to define, and varies in degrees from person to person. Perusing a dictionary gives me evenhandedness, free from bias; just; impartial. A cursory comparison of asymmetry and fairness immediately tells us these two terms appear incompatible. My question then becomes why rational, self-interested players would be willing to put up with glaring inequalities which characterize world PvP. I accept that there are many reasons to play world PvP, ranging from puerile ones like the desire to "pwn""nooblets" to the desire to test oneself against constantly adapting human opposition. But the fact is, there is a sizeable number of intelligent, seemingly rational players who choose to make these seemingly toxic virtual worlds their home, and I would like to address why this is the case.

I am going to approach the problem of asymmetry and fairness by adopting the following approach. Firstly, I would like to argue that asymmetry is a systemic aspect of open world PvP, and in fact constitutes much of its appeal to its existing player base because it allows gameplay elements which cannot exist in balanced games. Secondly, I would argue that players are willing to tolerate asymmetrical encounters as long as they believe that equal opportunity exists in the world. Going back to the dictionary I saw a definition which resonated to me as a fan of open world PvP. Under informal was written "a fair go", which is an Australian colloquialism for equal opportunity. Could it be that fairness for people who play open world PvP doesn't lie in the uneven fights in the world, but rather in the equality of access to power?

I. ASYMMETRY IS A SYSTEMIC ASPECT OF WORLD PVP

The most common objection raised by non-PvPers is that world PvP isn't fair. Well, yeah. It isn't. Certainly not in the way traditional PvP games are. Consider the following examples:

a) A level 90 ganks a level 20 in WoW;

b) A player in PvP gear demolishes an equivalently skilled player wearing PvE gear;

c) A player in ilvl 541 PvE gear crushes a player wearing ilvl 493 PvP gear;

d) Four guys jump one player in Planetside 2;

e) An alliance in null sec EVE with 500 members moves into a system controlled by a small alliance of 50 members. The small alliance has no chance, and is forced to leave the system permanently;

f) A team of WoW Gladiators (top 0.5% of Arena players) meet an equivalent number of players in the open world and wipes the floor with them;

g) A player with a powerful army in Evony is driven out of the region because a player with a smaller army continually attacks his holdings whenever he is offline and unable to defend himself. The first player can only play 2-3 hours 2-3 times a week while the other has much more time at his disposal and can attack at this his/her discretion;

h) A player chances on another mining unawares in the world. The first players swigs a flask, eats some buff food, and attacks the enemy, getting the opener and killing them.

We could conceivably go on and on and cite more examples, but in each case the point is that power asymmetry exists everywhere in world PvP. Going back to the examples above these asymmetries are based on the following factors:

a) Level;

b) Gear differential based on specialised sets of gear;

c) Gear differential based on gear power levels;

d) and e) Number of players;

f) Skill;

g) Time available to play;

h) Readiness;

Almost all encounters in world PvP are unbalanced, and only a very small subset of encounters, in which the participants are equally matched in gear, skill and readiness, would be considered balanced. Asymmetry is a systemic feature of open world PvP. Keep in mind I am talking about persistent world PvP, not PvP that is fenced off in instanced settings like Arenas and Rated BGs. I can throw some factors off the top of my head which would also affect the fairness of most open world PvP games - duration of subscription, size of alliance/clan/corporation/guild, experience, faction/population balance, God-given talent, latency, hardware specs and time available for play. All these will impact the relative balance of any given world PvP game without even factoring in the mechanics or class balance.

Custer on being overwhelmed at Little Big Horn - "this is so unfair dude, I'm not playing this game no more."

I can visualize world PvP games in which every encounter has to be balanced, and once any encounter crosses a certain "fairness" threshold the game has to step in and impose restrictions. But if interactions were regulated in such a way in games it would completely alter the nature of the world PvP, and to a way that would not be to my taste. I wouldn't recognize that type of game as a world PvP game. Games like EVE, Darkfall, DAOC and Planetside 2 wouldn't exist, and if they did, they would be castrated, diluted versions of themselves. I would wager that the existing player base would desert the game in droves - the most common complaint players and prominent bloggers have in EVE Online is that the game is becoming too "easy". Poetic Stanzel, a prominent EVE blogger, recently quit EVE, and the reasons he cites is that CCP is "making it much safer, spending development resources to protect idiots. I want a game where players have to protect themselves. A game that forces players to play smart. A game where players cannot rely on the developer to protect them from their own laziness and ignorance." If you peruse blogs about EVE in the majority of cases any changes advocated by these writers are for less regulation, not more.

I would argue that it is important to regulate some aspects of gameplay - protecting new players is important, otherwise you basically kill your own game - but overregulation kills the very thing which makes world PvP interesting for many players. Let's consider some hypothetical solutions to the balance problem in open world games. Should an avatar be expected to walk up to you like Inigo Montoya in "The Princess Bride", help you up the cliff, then wait for you to catch your breath before engaging you in battle left-handed in order to give you a fighting chance? Is this what people truly expect in open world PvP? Should CFC, the dominant alliance in EVE, have left their capital ships at home during the Fountain War because TEST didn't have any and relied on their allies to provide them with cap support? Let's assume that the level differential in WoW didn't exist - everyone is 90 - and everyone was wearing the same type of gear. Would this finally be considered fair? What about if you get jumped by three or four people? Should they cap world PvP to one versus one duels and make people in excess in this number wait in line? What about 2k+ rated players (roughly top 5% of active PvPers and probably less than 1% of the overall WoW population)? Should they be banned from the general population because they represent overpowered threats to the population at large? Perhaps given handicaps when they walk around Azeroth? What about time zones? EVE, Darkfall and Evony campaigns are heavily influenced by time zones. Should players in these persistent worlds be immune to attack when they are offline? You could basically turtle up if you were faced with odds against your favor - just log off and you'd be safe.

As you can see, attempts to equalize encounters in world PvP leads to very artificial and unnatural scenarios, and destroys the essence of world PvP. Ultimately the fairness argument is just a smokescreen. The real issue is that simply put, people want to retain total control over their gameplay sessions, and I completely get that. They want safety. control and convenience. The argument that I don't do world PvP because I want to do my own thing in my own free time is the strongest and most irrefutable argument one can put forward against non-consensual PvP. But people who argue that they don't do world PvP because it's not balanced completely miss the point - they are looking for aspects of traditional balanced competition in an environment which is fundamentally asymmetrical in nature.

II. ASYMMETRY AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Why do rational, self-interested people tolerate seemingly imbalanced encounters which are the norm in world PvP? Clearly it's not to everyone's tastes - there are people who despise world PvP for exactly this reason, and I can't fault them for this. Regardless, people do it all the time - the empirical data is there in the form of subscribers who continually log in and play games like Darkfall, EVE Online, and Planetside 2. Fundamentally I believe people are willing to put up with asymmetry as long as they believe the world they inhabit is one of equal opportunity. Some people will endure asymmetry in their interactions because they think the advantages gained by those in power are attainable by them in the future. The American dream writ small. That's one of the reasons why we put up with inequities, injustices, and asymmetry in real life isn't it? Lassez-faire capitalism argues for minimum government and for letting the market sort itself out on its own. Similar principles are at work in world PvP I think. Yes, some people are richer and poorer than others. Some people have more power than others. But as long as players believe that the game offers equal opportunity, they will tolerate it. They accept the imbalances because they think they are smart enough, good enough or cunning enough to overcome these disadvantages and eventually become one of the elite. It becomes a point of pride with them. CCP Soundwave, the former lead designer of EVE Online (and who now works for Riot Games on League of Legends), summarized the enduring attraction of the game with this quote at EVE Fanfest 2013: "Players are not entitled to success, the pinnacle is coveted by many players, but many more will fail on the way."

Success or not, people would not play world PvP games if they believed that they didn't have an equal shot at making it to the pinnacle. Let's say that Blizzard came up with a misconceived scheme to reward long time subscribers in which players who joined the game in Vanilla can level up to 100, BC players can level to 95, Wrath to 90, Cata to 85, and new subscribers to 80. This is plainly ridiculous, and the net result would be that only Vanilla players would be left and everyone else would leave. Give everyone the same shot at making 100, though, and people will endure getting ganked and dogpiled because they believe that one day they will make it to the top.

Laurence J. Peter, author of The Peter Principle, also argued that "equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent." It's actually a real argument, based on the fact that in fair environments people will keep getting promoted until they reach a position above their abilities and stop there, thus leaving people in jobs they are no longer competent at doing. I included this quote because at first glance I thought it reflected the type of elitism that world PvP players sometimes display. The amount of scorn and derision poured on "idiots" (as per Poetic Stanziel) and "morons and slackers" (as per Gevlon) reflects a mindset commonly shared by players of open world games like EVE and Darkfall - namely the game offers equal opportunities at power, and it is only the incompetence of the bad players that is holding them back.

A necessary corollary of equal opportunity is access. It's not enough that players have the capacity to hit maximum level. They must also have the means, or access, to do it. I don't believe ganking is "unfair" because it is "unbalanced." Ganking CAN be "unfair" if it blocks access to power and robs the other player of agency. To illustrate my point, consider the following. If you are a level 20 Alliance character you could conceivably level in Ashenvale, Duskwood, Hillsbrad or the Wetlands (all 20-25 zones). If you wanted to level in 15-20 or 25-30 zones you could triple the number of zones available to you for leveling. That constitutes a significant amount of choice and real estate, and considerably reduces the odds of being ganked. Imagine then a variant of WoW in which only Ashenvale existed, and you could only level in this zone. Every ganker in Azeroth would flock to this location, and your chances of getting pummeled repeatedly increases dramatically. If high level players were allowed to bottleneck lower level players this way it would be "unfair" - not because they were higher - but because they were denying players equal access. It would be bad game design. Equal opportunity would exist in name only (everyone can be 100) but it would remain substantively unfair (people can't get there).

We have to be careful here though, because asymmetry doesn't necessarily mean the total removal of agency. It can. The fact that WoW has so many leveling zones, however, disperses the risk to lowbies, while keeping the potential for skirmishes intact. This is also the reason why EVE has highsec and lowsec zones - firstly, as a means of protecting new players, and secondly, as an avenue of retreat for alliances which have been driven out of null sec. Going back to the issue of agency, however, I never felt like a hapless victim in WoW, even when I was getting repeatedly stomped into the turf. I always felt like I had choices - I could level in a different spot; I could wait until the coast was clear; I could call on my mates; I could ask for help in general; I could sniff out the area before venturing forward; I could quest with other people. The crux of the matter remains that people want control over their time. It's not that the ganker has bound you, gagged you and stripped you of all your choices - rather, he/she has taken one choice away from you, namely your initial choice to come to this very spot, and do what you wanted to do, whether it was to quest, farm or whatever. Some people don't want to make other choices, and that is a fair call and they don't play world PvP as a result. As I said, the argument that I don't do non-consensual PvP because I want to control my gameplay in my own time is the best, most unassailable objection you can make. But it's not true that power asymmetry robs you of all agency. You still have choices, and the quality of the game will determine the breadth of these choices. Good games will give you alternative paths to power. Bad games will not. WoW, for me, gave me enough choices that I never felt like I was being stonewalled. I still think WoW world PvP is bad, but not because it never gave me enough options to avoid/mitigate ganking and attain maximum level.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thomas Hobbes in a nutshell - all men are bastards and will fight to dominate each other if not kept in check by a government to keep them in line. In the same way, gankers and griefers will always exist in world PvP games unless kept in check by the developers of the game. In simulating a war, however, where "force and fraud are the two cardinal virtues" (Hobbes again) is it really a good thing to set artificial limits on what would otherwise be accurate depictions of human nature in a political vacuum?

I try never to forget that we are discussing games, but discussing this topic has opened my eyes and made me think about the reasons why we tolerate asymmetry in the real world. In thinking about this topic I couldn't help compare equality and access in games to real life parallels in the civil rights movement and women's suffrage. It made me read up about asymmetrical warfare, which is the military term for conflicts between belligerents of unequal size, and the type of tactics employed by guerillas and insurgents against overwhelmingly powerful enemies. I've also started re-reading political tracts which I merely endured when I was an undergraduate because of my interest in this topic. In the real world I would never condone asymmetries which I think are fine in virtual ones. That is the purpose of legitimate law and government - to mitigate between the powerful and the powerless and to preserve fundamental rights. Virtual worlds are a different story, however, and for me I like my virtual worlds on the harsh and unforgiving side. I'm not alone - there are thousands of players who like these type of games, and they constitute the existing player base of games like EVE Online, Darkfall, DAOC and Planetside 2. In my opinion, all is fair in love and war in persistent worlds AS LONG AS everyone has the same shot at making it to the top. It might seem harsh, but I will always defend a player's right in a world PvP game to attack you anytime, anywhere, especially when you aren't ready. The onus remains with the game designers to make sure that all players have an equal shot at making it to the top DESPITE the best efforts of gankers and griefers by providing multiple routes to power. Asymmetry is fine in persistent worlds of equal opportunity.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario.

Garrosh Hellscream is triumphant. King Varian Wrynn is dead, along with his son Anduin, both fallen in the siege of Ogrimmar. Jaina Proudmoore, dead. The Alliance expedition force, thrown into disorder by the death of their leaders, is unable to mount an organised defence against the horrors unleashed by Garrosh. The Horde which rose up against Hellscream are cowed into submission, and bend the knee. Vol'jin is executed as a traitor for his part in the Darkspear rebellion. Baine Bloodhoof, too honourable to kneel, is dead. Sylvanas, the ruthless pragmatist that she is, has no compunctions about turning on her allies and swearing allegiance to Garrosh once again. Lor'themar, horrified but unwilling to face the unstoppable Hellscream and Sylvanas both, also bends the knee. The most horrific fate is reserved for Thrall, whose shattered body adorns the topmost spike of Orgrimmar as a incontrovertible proof of Garrosh's ultimate victory.

With the fall of their leaders the Alliance flees back to Azeroth, but their respite is brief. Stormwind is reduced to ashes, decimated by the same weapon used to destroy Theramore. Ironforge holds out longer because of its impregnable walls, but is betrayed from within by the Dark Iron dwarves. The last bastions of freedom lie in the islands of the north, in Teldrassil and the Azuremyst Isle. Their days are also numbered, for the new Warchief will brook no dissent to his rule. Though the tattered remnants of the Alliance will fight bravely in the final battles, in the end they too, will fall to the Horde in time. Malfurion, Tyrande, Velen, Greymane and the Naaru O'ros all perish in the apocalyptic battles that follow, but not before they exact a bloody toll on the rampaging Horde. The Exodar, defended by O'ros against Garrosh's weapons of mass destruction, is taken in a bloody siege which lasts months. Teldrassil is also besieged, but as Garrosh orders mana bomb after mana bomb detonated against the Great Tree's branches and boughs it finally catches alight and burns, along with the final remnants of Alliance resistance.

A world where the Horde are triumphant. Where the only players you see are orcs, goblins, tauren, blood elves, trolls and the Forsaken. A world where Alliance players are non-existent, or where they hide, quivering, in the remaining safe zones of the world.

Can't imagine it? Look no further than the PvP server of Illidan then, where according to WoWProgress, 18,760 Horde outnumber a paltry four Alliance. FOUR. That's a ratio of 4,690 to 1. I heartily recommend reading Theck's post regarding population dynamics and unstable equilibrium on Sacred Duty. It's excellent. I also found another site called US Realm Population courtesy of GryphonHeart, which gives somewhat different numbers. According to this site, there are 204,032 Horde characters versus 13,853 Alliance on Illidan (giving a different ratio of almost 15 to 1). Pick whatever stat you like - WoWProgress only measures level 90s who have killed at least one boss in T15 content (or are in a guild which has killed at least one boss in T15 content), while US Realm Pop counts all characters. Whatever way you choose to cut it, this is a massive, massive imbalance.

I was completely shocked at the population disparities which existed between the two factions. I must have been quite naive, because I simply trusted Blizzard to balance the server population. I've been a big defender of gankers because my personal experience of levelling on Frostmourne told me that gankers were a manageable threat, and they added further layers to the virtual world. That was before I found out that Alliance outnumber the Horde two to one on Frostmourne (using WoWProgress stats). No wonder why there was always Alliance around to call for help. I have argued that asymmetry is part of persistent worlds, and that players will tolerate asymmetries as long as they believe they have equal opportunities at making it to the top. There is a limit to this tolerance however, and, seriously, this type of asymmetry is just plainly ridiculous. Why aren't people up in arms about this? Clearly the blogging community is pissed, but there's no sign of a kind of mass discontent which normally prompts companies to make hasty revisions.

My opinion is that people tolerate it because world PvP means nothing in WoW. People are fighting for nothing. They are just fighting for the sake of fighting. There is nothing at stake, and the death penalty is very light, especially compared to EVE (where you lose your ship) and Darkfall (where you drop all your stuff when you die). You don't get any rewards for fighting in world PvP - all you get are a few paltry points of Honor, and no Conquest at all. There are no incentives (except perhaps factional loyalty, which is a tenuous one at best) - as far as I can tell, open world PvP in WoW is just another type of player driven world hazard, one which players can voluntarily forego if they choose a PvE server. If the Horde and Alliance were actually fighting for something meaningful this kind of server imbalance would never be tolerated. At the moment the optimal way of earning PvP currency is by playing random BGs, Arenas and Rated BGs. If you could only earn Honor or Conquest points in open world PvP then you can bet your ass that all the PvPers who attacked Theck about his post on Reddit would also be screaming about the imbalance, because the losing side would not be able to grind as many points as the winners. In this scenario there is something at stake now, which means people suddenly become interested in equal access and opportunity.

Because world PvP in WoW means nothing, then people who like it will indulge in it, while others not so inclined will tolerate it to a point because the penalties are comparatively light (spirit rez and a short corpse run). Once they reach their limit, however, they will leave or transfer. Blizzard has done nothing to date, because it is a source of revenue for them - at $25 per transfer the revenue they generate must be in the millions over the years (40,000 transfers yields a million dollars at no extra cost to the company). Blizzard can rationalise their inaction by saying nothing is at stake here - PvP is voluntary (via server choice), and people can level safely in instanced dungeons, or grind their PvP currency in the balanced environments of Arenas and BGs. I've always thought that world PvP in WoW was bad because it means nothing. Looking at how Blizzard has decided to deal with this issue (i.e. do nothing) I've come to the conclusion that they know it too, but since they make money from it they choose not to do anything about it. Instead they have devoted their energies into creating a ladder PvP game which is separate from world proper as a sort of concession. Sorry guys, we know world PvP is meaningless and server population will become more and more unbalanced as people start transferring, but if you are interested in PvP you can play Arenas and Rated BGs in a ladder competition instead. We'll set aside instanced zones where you can fight, and we'll do our best to balance the game as best as we can in these instanced environments. You can measure yourself against the player pool, push rating, and we will award you accolades and titles commensurate with your achievements. If you are good enough we will also fly you to Shanghai and let you play for a significant amount of real world money. If this was their intent then I believe they have succeeded. I personally enjoy WoW ladder PvP, and that's the main reason why I still subscribe to WoW. There is no point mourning or wishing for better open world PvP, however. Blizzard has already written it off, so it is better to look elsewhere.

Open world PvP in WoW lost its lustre for me a long time ago, so much so that I packed up my toons on the PvP servers of Frostmourne and Garithos and consolidated them all on Thorium Brotherhood, which is of all things, a RP server. I didn't need to be on a PvP server to play Arenas and Rated BGs, and my family and friends were here, so it made sense to move. Given my renewed interest in "meaningful world PvP" I quit WoW for a few months and tried to subscribe to EVE and Darkfall. In both cases I was stymied by RL obstacles. As a resident of Japan I am required to subscribe to Nexon, a third party payment company based in Korea in order to play EVE. EVE has very kindly supplied a translation guide on how to go about completing the Nexon application (which is in Japanese). but this is something I am not willing to do, especially when the terms and conditions are in a foreign language. Darkfall won't allow me to play on their US server because they are releasing a localised version of their game in Japan and Korea "in the near future." If you are familiar at all with the Darkfall developmental cycle you would realise that "in the near future" could mean anything between three months and a year. I tried a few work-arounds - I tried to mask my IP address with a VPN and make it look like I was subscribing from North America. No luck. I asked my friends at home to subscribe in my name from Australia. Nope.

So, stonewalled on both fronts, I reactivated my WoW account and am slowly getting back into the ladder circuit with a vague goal of finally breaking the 2k barrier on either format. I'm really just waiting for TESO, Camelot Unchained, Star Citizen and WH40K: Eternal Crusade. These titles sound very promising, but given that TESO won't be released until next year, and the other three are not being released until 2015, I have need of something to occupy my time. Reading Theck's post, however, and imagining a world where the Alliance was gone and where the Horde roamed unchecked has rekindled my interest in roaming the wilds of Azeroth. I said earlier that people fight for nothing in WoW OWPvP. Perhaps a better way to articulate it is that in the absence of external incentives, people who fight bring their own reasons with them. Ego, validation, competitiveness, malice, loyalty to friends/factions/guilds, a sense of justice, a quixotic desire to rid the world of "evil" - who knows, only the individual can say. I can only speak for myself, but the idea of being one of the last few surviving members of the Alliance has set my mind ablaze. When computer games were a generation away and all our role playing was done with pen and paper, imagination was sufficient to tide us over. Ladder PvP is e-sports, with all that entails. World PvP should be about the world, and role-playing is inhabiting that world. And there is something wrong with a server which is overwhelmingly dominated by the Horde. Where the Alliance cowers in secret. This does not sit well with me as a person who has only ever played Alliance. A world so tamed and domesticated by the Horde that it is, for all intents and purposes, a PvE server.

Night Elf Remake by Astoroth on DeviantArt.

Azeroth was once home to dwarves, gnomes, humans, and night elves. It has given succour to the draenei, and given the bestial worgen a place where they were accepted and belong. To have these voices stilled forever is a crime beyond reckoning. The great cities of Stormwind and Ironforge are silent, smoking ruins. Everywhere the goblins, the blood elves, the trolls, the tauren, the Forsaken and the orcs. Drinking in our taverns. Living in our homes. Sleeping in our beds. Killing the ragged remnants of our people with impunity.

I have seen with my own eyes the silent pits underneath the eaves of Elwynn Forest. The twisted and broken bodies stacked like cordwood within. I have seen the smoke rising from the embers of Teldrassil, and wept tears of rage and sorrow as the fire consumed our homes. I have seen our ships burn on the water, and heard the cries of the damned as the icy seas claimed them for their own. I have held the shattered bodies of my friends and comrades in my arms, and watched their spirits depart, leaving empty husks in their wake. All that I hold dear in this world, gone.

Dear Goddess, grant me the strength to avenge the fallen. Guide my blade and let the enemies of our people taste bloody vengeance. And when I pass from this mortal realm. forgive my many trespasses and enfold me in your loving embrace so that I might join my brethren in the stars above. Grant my soul rest, my mind peace, and my heart succour, for I struggle, milady. I struggle, great Elune, to see the meaning behind this. How can this be allowed to pass? Why did not you not heed us? Where were you when we needed you most? Answer me, I pray.

No. Answer me now. I demand it. I would know the mind of the Goddess, who willingly stepped aside and watched her people die. For what reason did we worship you all these millennia, only to have you betray us now? Where is your divinity now? Your grace? Your godhead?

Mute to the last. I can tell you where your divinity lies. It lies at the bottom of the pit where Stormwind once stood. It lies rotting with the carcasses of the countless dead. It lies in the ashes of the great Tree. It lies in the abyss beneath the waves, along with my daughter, and any reason I have left to remain in this world.

Before I depart I make this promise. I will kill every Horde I see. I will set upon them in the shadows. I will make a mockery of their great numbers. I will give them cause to remember the kaldorei, even as our memory passes from this world. This I vow, as the last of my kind. By the Goddess - no. By the great Tree - by the Sentinels - by the memory of my daughter - the Horde shall pay.

I transferred my 85 night elf rogue to Illidan last Monday.

I transferred my 85 rogue to Illidan because I was taken aback at the massive disparity between the Alliance and Horde as illustrated on the WoWProgress and US Server Population websites, and I wanted to experience first-hand what this felt like. I've always believed that ganking in WoW is a manageable and often overrated threat based on my own experience on Frostmourne and Garithos. I'm willing to concede that I may be wrong, because it was only recently that I found out that the Alliance outnumber the Horde on Frostmourne 2 to 1. If I can level a non-stealth toon from 1 to 90 on the most (or second most, depending on what stats you use) populated realm in the US and where the disparity between the Horde and Alliance is at its starkest (4500+ to 1, according to WoWProgress), then it will confirm to my own satisfaction that ganking in WoW is no impediment to attaining the power cap (i.e. currently at 90 with full Conquest gear) and thus fulfils the criteria for equal opportunity in asymmetrical worlds. Plus I like the idea of being vastly outnumbered and surrounded by a sea of enemies. It appeals to my role-playing sensibilities.

Ganking on Illidan

For now though, I am planning to level my 85 rogue to 90, gear her up in full Honor and then full Conquest, and embark on a ganking campaign while doing so. My goal is 1000 ganks, which is a completely arbitrary number I made up. I was originally going to transfer my feral druid, who is already 90 and in full Tyrannical, but the rogue was a better choice because having to level her from 85 to 90 will require me to engage in the world by questing. In either case I was always going to bring a stealth toon (I also considered taking my hunter) to offset the massive population balance I was expecting. Rogues can engage anyone on their own terms, and so the population doesn't even matter. Anytime things look grim, just Vanish, Cloak off any debuffs and wait for a better opportunity. Even if you have Bleeds on you, Vanish will still work for three seconds, which is more than enough time to Sprint away and escape. Couple that with Gouge, Blind and Kidney Shot, and a rogue has enough tools to control a fight so even if you can't win, you can still escape.

Another factor to my advantage is that I'm not interested in PvE content at all, which means I can be completely flexible as to how I level up my toon (levelling in dungeons is cheating, however, because it's not part of the world). In his post on Sacred Duty Theck complains about world PvP because it prevents him from enjoying the content on the Timeless Isle on Tichondrius. I'm not interested in the Timeless Isle, and I have no intention of gathering Timeless coins or killing the mobs/bosses on the island. The Timeless Isle's sole interest to me is the fact that it is a locus point around which Horde and Alliance gather around. In better OWPvP games locations have an intrinsic value because they either produce resources, or confer strategic benefits. In WoW one place is as good as another, and where the players congregate is where the gankers go, too.

I did set some ground rules for myself though:

i) No sitting duck stuff - I'm not going to attack anyone below 85. I was going to limit myself to equivalent levels, but there is still value in attacking players lower than you because it makes them call for help in the world and brings on the defenders of the faction to the area. Especially in Illidan where there will no shortage of Horde. Ratio of 4500+ to 1, remember?

ii) Limit ganks to three maximum. This might even be too much, because you pretty much know the quality of your opponent after the first engagement by the CDs they use (or misuse). I've ganked about 30 people now since transferring here the Monday before last, but I've only "camped" one person and killed them three times. The fights were close though, so perhaps that was a motivator to keep on fighting. Plus he was doing rude emotes. Bastard.

Tolerable Imbalances

I share Theck's outrage at the existing population imbalance on some of the WoW servers, and the fact that Blizzard have decided not to do anything about it at all. I have argued that asymmetry is fine in persistent worlds of equal opportunity, but it's clear that for both him and I we draw the line at such skewed faction asymmetry. It's completely ridiculous, it goes against the philosophy of equal opportunity, and in any MMO other than WoW which had higher OWPvP stakes it would be a game-breaker. If the upcoming TESO game allowed such disparities between the three factions in their upcoming Alliance versus Alliance gameplay, there would be a tremendous outcry, and rightfully so. But oddly enough because WoW OWPvP is so meaningless, the population imbalance doesn't actually stop you from getting to the power cap (90, with full Conquest gear). Some people might dispute this, but if I can level a non-stealth toon from 1 to 90 (a future project of mine) and get them fully capped out with Conquest on Illidan of all places, then you can bloody well do it anywhere. Levelling from 1 to 85 appears easy. The levelling zones are deserted. I made sure to visit these zones during US peak times to get a better idea of population distribution, and even during these times I was lucky to see more than 2-3 Horde in a single zone. I have yet to see a single Alliance player in the world in Illidan, but they are present in very small numbers in the capital cities. 85 to 90 would be a little more difficult because the population is a little more concentrated, but there are many places you can go in the world where you will be able to level in relative peace and quiet. Of course if you draw near population centres and/or major quest hubs your chances of getting ganked grow exponentially, but staying away from these places when you are heavily outnumbered is just common sense. So my preliminary conclusion based on my own observations is that the threat of being ganked is overstated, and is easily shaken off by simply being aware of your surroundings, moving off when threatened, being flexible about where you level, and/or taking a time out when you are being camped. It is not an impediment to attaining the power cap. It IS an impediment if you want to do world PvE content, but you do know that you are on a PvP server, right? Right?

Theck implicitly argues that he would not be complaining about world PvP if faction population were better balanced. I argue that even if population dynamics were more or less equal he would still find his PvE experience completely disrupted given the distribution of players on his server (he also alludes to this on his post). Almost two-thirds of the top 100 US Arena players in the 3v3 bracket (which is the tournament standard) reside in Tichondrius, and they are predominantly Horde. Ranked PvP in WoW is a team e-sport which requires good team mates you can "synergize" with in order to succeed, and therefore aspiring players (prior to cross-realm Arenas in 5.4) used to move to servers with high ranked players and high PvP populations. Even if the Horde and the Alliance were roughly equal in size, the preponderance of PvPers on the Horde side would make it more than likely that disruptions on the Timeless Isle would continue unabated even if there was parity between faction population. This alludes back to points I have made in other posts, namely that asymmetry is a systemic part of open world PvP in persistent worlds. It's interesting to see where the limits of tolerance lie, and how it varies wildly from player to player. Seriously, though, if Theck's primary agenda is to enjoy the content on the Timeless Isle then he should transfer to a PvE server. I know he has his reason to stay, in which case I'm afraid that he is stuck in a quandary. Blizzard is not going to do anything because i) they make money from server transfers; and ii) OWPvP in WoW means nothing at all.

The Evils of Ganking

I finally realised why gankers are so hated in WoW, and it ties in again with the fact that world PvP is meaningless. Gankers are not fighting for resources, or trying to take or defend territory. It's not EVE, Darkfall or Planetside 2, where sovereignty, income and/or player-built structures are at stake. They're not doing it for Honor or for Conquest Points. In WoW, gankers are essentially doing it just to mess with you, and perhaps people react to that on a visceral level. The obvious counter-argument again is that if you dislike having your play-style interrupted in such a fashion then you shouldn't be on a PvP server. There are benefits to gankers. Gankers are a player-driven hazard which adds layers to the world. They encourage grouping and socialisation. I just wish that open world PvPers had something more to fight for than just fighting for its own sake in WoW. I have no illusions about what I am doing. I can write pages and pages of fluff as to why my rogue is fighting in Illidan, but when it comes down to it all I am doing is ganking and disrupting people as they go about their business. I have no external motivations for doing this, except for the fact that the enemy is Horde and I am Alliance. For this reason I made ground rules for myself because picking on lower levels seems akin to beating up little children, despite my standpoint that in PvP worlds all things are fair in love and war. Imagine an alternative scenario, however, like in DAOC (Dark Age of Camelot), where the enemy player is a scout and is trying to ascertain faction numbers in a town/keep. In this case I would have no compunctions about obliterating the scout regardless of how weak they were because I would have done it for strategic reasons. This type of scenario would appear to be more "morally" palatable because players can appreciate the reasons for why the lower level player was attacked. Soldiers can respect soldiers on opposing sides. Everyone despises thieves and murderers. Context is everything, and WoW OWPvP has very little. In the end though, it might be enough that you chose red, I chose blue, we both entered into this type of game of our own free will, therefore as per the rules of the game we will try to kill each other.

Incidentally that is why I am so excited about TESO. I'm hoping that the battle for Cyrodiil will become what null-sec is to EVE. It's still not going to be as good as EVE's null sec, because it artificially divides players into three factions rather than allow them to organically develop their own (there are upsides to this however). I can live with that though, because now the throne of Tamriel is at stake and our factions have something to fight for. How cool is that?!? CONTEXT, BABY! Plus it seems like that we are going to able to interact with members of the other factions to create temporary alliances and the like, which will be excellent. There will be player-owned keeps, with player-owned shops in the keeps. Finally, it's Elder Scrolls and I look forward to sharing my love of the Elder Scrolls universe with my gaming circle, who only came into computer games via WoW. I'm going to try to gently nudge them into rolling characters on the Ebonheart Alliance, but sadly it's not going to be up to me. I have a bad feeling that I'm going to end up as an alien-looking elf or a furry humanoid thing in the Altmer Dominion. Although, playing a drugged up Khajit assassin high on moon sugar and skooma might be interesting.

In the meantime, I'm going to go gank some Horde.

It's been a couple of months since I transferred my rogue to Illidan. Since that time I've attained the PvP power cap in WoW by gearing her up in full Grievous, and have ganked over 100 people on the server. I started making a list of my victims, but stopped after a while because I didn't see the point in it. What does it mean, to gank a number of interchangeable Horde? Pure quantity means nothing, and proves nothing. It's far more impressive for someone to say that they have attained 2k in the ladder competition than it is to say that they have ganked over 2000 people in world PvP. For this reason I am finding it difficult to maintain my ganking mojo, because it appears to be more and more meaningless. The only real good reason to keep ganking appears to be based on pitting my rogue against longer and longer odds to see whether or not she can survive.

Horde Occupied Illidan

Illidan appears deserted on the Alliance side. Walking around the Shrine of Seven Stars I am lucky to see two or three other Alliance pottering about, but this is on par with my experience on my main server on Thorium Brotherhood, which is also quite empty. The biggest difference for me is the lack of activity on the Auction House on the Alliance side – most items are either unavailable or grossly overpriced. It's difficult to sell items either – despite repeated attempts I have been unable to sell any engineering scopes, which I had hoped to be my rogue's main source of income. There is a work around for this based on moving items to the other side via the neutral Auction Houses and selling the items on the Horde side, but for now my rogue will just have to do with the gold she carried with her when she transferred over. In order to see how the other side lived my rogue went on a stealth mission to Orgrimmar and the Shrine of Two Moons. The difference was stark – these places were teeming with Horde going about their business, a far cry from the desolation found in the cities of the Alliance.

Sneaking above the Horde in the Halfhill inn.

The difference was starker when I went out in the world. In the two months I have been on Illidan I have met one other Alliance player wandering out in the wilds of Pandaria. It was a dwarf warrior whose name eludes me, but when we saw each other we both emoted a /gasp of surprise, /waved, and then went on about our business. I have assisted guildies being camped or fighting out in the world when they asked for help in guild chat, but aside from these instances where I was actually called out I have not met any other Alliance in the world at large. The Timeless Isle is unsurprisingly dominated by the Horde. Dominated is too weak a word – there are NO Alliance present on the Timeless Isle at all. If there are any I have yet to meet them in my wanderings.

The lack of players present in the world is misleading however, because Alliance players are in the game in significant numbers. When I went to Ironforge during the Winter Veil festival the place was veritably teeming with Alliance. It was a far cry from the impressions given by the numbers on the WoWProgress and US Population websites, which would seem to suggest that Alliance players were almost non-existent. I joined one of the biggest guilds on the Alliance side, and at any given time there are 20 to 30 players online. The biggest difference was that they simply weren't out in Pandaria – they were in instanced spaces, or dispersed over Azeroth levelling their low toons. Clearly the Timeless Isle was off-limits given the prevalence of the Horde, but the rest of Azeroth is a massive place, and the Alliance are out there, questing quietly in the empty spaces and scattering like mice when the Horde roll up.

PvE versus PvP Gear

When I first started my campaign I was under the impression that I would just roll up to the server and wreak havoc on the unsuspecting denizens of Illidan. While this was true with obvious newbies and non-PvPing PvErs, I found that experienced players gave me a run for my money and drove me away or killed me once they recovered from the shock of being ambushed. I also found that PvErs have a decisive gear advantage in world PvP, especially Heroically geared PvErs. I dueled a Heroically geared PvE enhancement shaman with my feral druid and I was completely shocked when I was three shotted. My druid can regularly tank burst from two to three DPS in Arenas and Rated BGs when I pop all my defensive CDs (Heart of the Wild/Survival Instincts/Might of Ursoc/Barkskin) but in the case of World PvP it didn't really matter at all – the shaman popped all his offensive CDs and dispatched me in less than five seconds. I found a way to win after getting smashed four or five times in a row, and this entailed getting the opener, getting some bleeds in, running away in order to restealth before the shaman could react, and reopening again. This allowed me to get a win or two, but this only worked because the shaman had no PvP experience at all (I looked at his achievements). Any halfway decent player would have destroyed me, and eventually this guy clued in to what I was doing, made the necessary adjustments and ripped me apart with superior firepower. This is a big source of complaint for many PvPers in WoW, and it is annoying to think that someone who can't PvP worth a damn can absolutely destroy people based purely on non-PvP gear. Nonetheless it is a non-issue for me because there is nothing significant at stake in WoW open world PvP. As stated in previous posts, we're not fighting for strategic objectives, or defending player built structures. We're not fighting for Honor or Conquest points, since these can be earned more efficiently elsewhere. We're not even fighting to stay alive, given the very lenient death penalty. It begs the question of "what are we fighting for?" Factional loyalty might have meant something in the early days of WoW, when you recognised that Southshore was Alliance turf and Tauren Mill was Horde. Nowadays my Rated BG team fights Alliance teams as much as Horde, and as far as I can tell, the only distinguishing factors between Alliance and Horde from a PvP perspective are the skins, and the racial abilities they have access to.

Powering up PvE gear over PvP is just a measure to protect PvErs from gankers like myself, and you can't really fault Blizzard for catering to their main subscriber base. I've noticed that the pejorative term “PvE heroes” has crept back in the lexicon of many PvPers I meet in OQueue nowadays, but PvErs have been on the receiving end of ganks over the years and it's really just a case of the wheel turning once again. Real PvP in WoW is found in ladder play, and since gear becomes scaled down in ladder matches this gear differential doesn't really matter. The big challenge for Blizzard will be the world PvP zone they are planning to implement in the upcoming expansion, because in this case something will be at stake. I guess the easy fix will be that items will be scaled down the same way once players are in the zone, but only time will tell what solution they decide on.

The counter-intuitive realisation I came to once I had moved to Illidan was that while unbalanced servers are not fun for the minority faction, they also rob the majority faction of the chance to engage in world PvP. Alliance are so rare in the world in Illidan that whenever I stir up a bit of trouble a veritable hornet's nest of Horde descend upon the area simply out of pure disbelief. It's like someone sighting Bigfoot or the Yeti, and it draws a pack of interested sightseers who are starved of any kind of world PvP. From this perspective seriously unbalanced servers are a disservice to legitimate world PvPers on either side, and the only real winners are players who flock to the majority faction in order to avoid engaging in world PvP while simultaneously claiming that they “live” on a PvP server. If there was a way for me to weed out these types of players they would be my targets of choice. I can't really talk, however, since by being a rogue I am effectively gaming the system too, giving myself the luxury of picking my fights while avoiding the retribution which would be my due if I wasn't playing a stealth class. Bottom line is, unbalanced servers hurt everyone. While asymmetrical encounters are the norm in world PvP, the bedrock of the system should be at least formal parity between the factions. It is the easiest, and perhaps the most fundamental aspect under the control of the developers. The fact that Blizzard tolerates such skewed populations is a tacit admission of barrenness of their world PvP system.

Learning the Art of Combat

The biggest impediment to my fledgling ganking career was not Horde numerical superiority nor PvE/PvP gear differential, but rather my complete ineptitude as a rogue. My co-mains are my holy paladin and my hunter, and so the rogue was relatively new to me in terms of play style and number of games played under my belt. After getting schooled by a monk when I was 87 I became semi-serious and started researching my class and spec, as well as practising more in randoms and 2s once I hit 90. I don't simply want to pick on newbies and the unsuspecting – I also want to present a credible threat to good PvPers and PvErs in equivalent or higher gear. There will always be players better than me – the ladder has taught me that – but if I'm going to gank, I'm going to be the best ganker I can be.

Another impediment to my aspirations as a melee class is that I still keyboard turn. I don't have this problem when I'm healing on my monk or my pallie, but oddly enough I still retain this habit when I play melee. This is a big no no, and I keep getting told to invest in a Razor Naga and to relearn my control method. This is sound advice, but I've decided not to take it. Firstly, I'm going to jump to TESO in April, which means time spent relearning my control method will be wasted anyway, and would be better spent on the new game. Secondly, keyboard turning is not as crucial for healing and ranged classes as it is for melee. Heals can heal “over their shoulder” and ranged classes are not usually required to make radical changes in facing and direction due to their play style and the ranges that they work with. Nonetheless I recognise this as a major defect in my game play, and it impacts my proficiency as a rogue.

I chose Combat as my main spec once I had enough points for the Grievous weapons. Once I spent my Conquest points my choice was locked in for the foreseeable future – Subtlety and Assassination both required daggers as weapons as opposed to swords/maces/axes/fist weapons for Combat, and so my choice of weapons dictated my spec until I completely max out my Grievous gear and am able to buy Grievous daggers with Honor. I chose Combat because it seemed the simplest out of all the three specs and therefore the easiest to learn. Subtlety has been the PvP spec for the longest time, but after doing my research I found that Combat had become competitive due to the changes implemented in 5.4. Woundman (a world championship level rogue) played Combat to 2k at the start of this season, and although he has since reverted back to Subtlety, his achievement has shown that Combat is a competitive spec. Killing Spree can now be used as a single target ability, and coupled with the burst trinket and Deep Insight can put out an amazing amount of damage in a short amount of a time. The fact that it gives the rogue immunity to CCs and peels while it is up makes it handy for forcing early defensive CDs. Another thing I like about Combat is the 8 second Kidney Shots (once the Revealing Strike debuff is on the target). Kidney Shot plus Prey on the Weak (10% extra damage on stunned targets) is a vicious combo, and is ideal for swaps. Since your team mates benefit from the extra 10% damage too, an ideal use for Kidney Shot is to call a swap on a target who has no Controlled Stun diminishing returns on them, Kidney them for 8 seconds and just go batshit on them. Hopefully they have already popped a trinket so they have to sit the whole 8 seconds, and in most cases it will be enough to land a kill.

Woundman (on the right with the long hair) is one of the leading rogues in the world, and early in S14 he showed that Combat can be a viable spec in 5.4.

The problem of Combat is that unlike Sub rogues who can Shadowdance every minute, Combat rogues have to time their burst to coincide with three major CDs – Killing Spree (2 minute CD), Adrenaline Rush (3 minute CD) and Shadow Blades (3 minute CD). I macro Adrenaline Rush and Shadow Blades together so effectively I have two major offensive CDs – Killing Spree every two minutes, and an Adrenaline Rush/Shadow Blades combo every three minutes. This is mitigated somewhat by Restless Blades, which reduces the CD on these abilities by two seconds per combo point used in a finisher (i.e. 10 seconds for a full five point finisher). I don't know what the real net CD becomes when you take these into consideration, but other Combat rogues have estimated that the real CD becomes approximately 90 seconds for Killing Spree and about two minutes for Adrenaline Rush/Shadow Blades. This is clearly dependent on how many finishers you can put out in the intervening period, and perhaps is the reason why Combat is called Combat – you have to stay in combat and fight in order to lower the CD on your major offensive abilities.

For this reason I've picked defensive talents on my rogue in order to boost her chances in survival in protracted fights. Feint is useful but I have to discipline myself to use it more often and I often end up wasting it. I also chose Combat Readiness over Nerve Strike, simply because it lasts longer, can be used on demand, and people in the six seconds after a Nerve Strike aren't really DPSing anyway, they are spending the first few seconds getting away from the rogue which means the damage mitigation only goes into effect in the last few seconds. On the other hand, Combat Readiness has a two minute CD, while Nerve Strike occurs automatically after every Cheap Shot and Kidney. The jury is still out on this one.

Ganking in a Meaningless World

I got my 1550+ achievement on my rogue so I'm out of the beginner phase and in the early stages of intermediate play. My own personal ranking systems runs like this – if you don't have the 1550+ achievement you are a beginner on that toon, if you are between 1550+ and 2000 you are an intermediate player, and if you have 2k or above you are advanced. By this criteria I am an intermediate player at best even on my mains since the best rating I have ever achieved is 1900+. I give kudos to players above 2k or more, because I know how hard it is to get there, having tried so hard and failed for so long. This is probably as good as I get, and having come to that realisation, the time is ripe for a move to The Elder Scrolls Online after almost nine years in WoW. In my remaining few months however, I'm going to make my rogue the best she can be, and try to keep pushing rating with my mains until TESO releases on April 4. But honestly, ganking lost its lustre very quickly for me. I need objectives and goals, and while the pure act of engaging in PvP combat still retains some of its charm, it is fleeting and short-lived. I can sustain myself somewhat with role-playing justifications, but ultimately without a corresponding structure within the game itself (i.e. the battle for the throne in TESO) it becomes an exercise in self-delusion. I cannot pretend to be “testing” myself against other players either, because a purer and more accurate format already exists for that in ladder PvP.

Hatakeyama surveys the carnage and finds it good. The skeletal remains mark the points where her victims fell.

More victims, viewed from the reverse angle. Most of the Horde that fell here were lured onto the guards who then attacked them. As long as you don't use any offensive moves the guards will not aggro onto you, but usually at this point the Horde are too mad to restrain themselves.

Despite my pretensions of maturity I guess that I am not immune to the lure of harvesting tears, which is the basest and honestly the most common reason why gankers exist. As I get older and hopefully more mature this type of justification loses its attraction, although it is a guilty pleasure I still occasionally indulge in. My rogue is based in the inn at Halfhill, and everytime she logs in she is surrounded by enemy Horde. I have to admit to a certain amount of glee when she runs around and kills people either AFK in the inn itself, or casually reading their mail at the steps to the inn. The biggest pleasure I derive from engaging in world PvP is flirting with the line between ganking people and escaping the swarms of vengeful Horde looking for payback. I enjoy the inevitable attempts at retribution that usually follow a gank in Halfhill, which usually consists of four to five Horde sweeping the inn's interiors and exteriors in a mostly futile attempt to find me. There is a thrill to be had in picking off people who stray a little too far from the group, dancing on the razor's edge of getting a kill or being cornered and killed myself. The biggest decisions I always have to make in world PvP when surrounded by multiple threats is whether to use my last Vanish or not – it is akin to the safety net below the tightrope walker, and once it is gone, I am committed to the fight to the bitter end regardless of how it turns out. This for me is where the fun of world PvP in WoW is, and I find myself going for riskier and riskier targets in search of vicarious thrills. When I started out I would never attack anyone unless they were alone with no other Horde in sight. Nowadays as soon as I log into Halfhill I am immediately on the offensive. I attack people reading their mail even if there are two to three other Horde standing close by. I attack people as they land at the flight path. Dying is a non-issue – the rez point is less than 30 seconds away. The fun for me lies in how many skeletal remains can I scatter around Halfhill and how much a pain in the ass I can be before I am finally brought to ground. It's a very shallow playstyle, but it is all I have until TESO comes out on April 4. On this date I change from being a ganker and a griefer to a scout, a reconnaissance unit, perhaps a diversionary unit, even into a front line soldier in the battle for the Ruby Throne. I can't wait.

I've decided to make Halfhill my main base of operations. Drawing upon my own experiences I realized that the gankers that stood out for me in the past were those people who were associated with specific times and areas, and who integrated themselves as part of the world by their constant presence. I have fond memories of the shaman Ashishishe who terrorised Nagrand during the Burning Crusade on my server, and while I started out hating him, his eventual departure from the game was genuinely regretted. I could count on him to be present anytime there was a battle for the village of Halaa, and what started out as a bitter rivalry evolved to respect once I met the man behind the avatar on the forums. It must also be noted that on PvE servers people have to flag voluntarily in order to fight which means that all battles are predicated on consent in a much purer and fresher sense than they would be on pure PvP servers. Players on pure PvP servers gave their consent a long time ago when they first signed up – people who fight on PvE servers give their consent on a case by case basis, but it is freely given and much more immediate. This is why PvPers on PvE servers give the other faction more respect, at least in my mind – there would be no fights at all if the Horde didn't come out to play. Of course I am assuming that people will react to me in the same way I eventually did to Ashishishe. They might just consider me to be an annoying pest, which is also completely fine with me.

Illidan on Winter's Veil - not so deserted after all.

Halfhill

I chose Halfhill for a few reasons. It is a major resting hub for players due to its proximity to the farms which means there are always targets of opportunity. It is completely dominated by the Horde on Illidan – I have never seen an Alliance player in Halfhill in my two months on this server, and it tickles my fancy to mess with the Horde in their own heartland. The area around Halfhill also features some unique characteristics which makes it conducive to ganking. Firstly, the existence of the farm itself constitutes a safe zone to escape to if things go really bad. Once you reach the borders of your farm you are phased safely to your own instance, effectively shaking off any would-be pursuers. Secondly, the presence of NPC guards at the market allows for some creative ganks by proxy. The NPC guards will aggro if you use any type of offensive ability at another player, but as long as you don't fight back you can run to the guards and aggro them onto your attacker. While most people are already aware of this, one way to exploit this is to get into a fight away from the guards, move close to them, and get out of combat (i.e. Vanish). Once you come out of combat all the offensive abilities you used on the other player are cleared and you are considered a “civilian” again – if your opponent is not careful they will hit you again once they see you, and all you have to do then is to run to the guards, who will then aggro onto your opponent while ignoring you completely. This tactic is very useful once you have killed the Horde a few times and have them all riled up and angry for vengeance – it is very satisfying to drag a posse of would-be avengers into the market area, and watch as the NPC guards wipe them out while you stand innocently next to Gina Mudclaw and Farmer Fung.

If you're trying this it is very important to make sure that you get out of combat BEFORE you drag your enemies to the guards. If you don't, regardless of where you started fighting (this can be miles away), running to the guards after hitting an opponent will make them aggro onto you. What you want to do is start a fight, somehow get out of combat (Vanish or Shadowmeld works wonders), reappear before an enraged Horde, provoke them into hitting you, then run to the guards and aggro all the guards onto them. Also keep in mind that even after aggroing the guards some players will go down trying to kill you while ignoring the guards beating on them, so it is still to handy to use a defensive CD or two to make sure you survive their last gasp attempts. Just don't hit back!

One of most satisfying ganks I've done was with a shadow priest at Halfhill. I killed him while he was AFK in the inn, which obviously made him mad because he started flying around the inn in a demented search for retribution. I then jumped him down the hill near the river while he was isolated, and he showed his true colours by almost killing me and driving me away. Filled with new-found respect I filed him away under “dangerous opponent” and started ganking other people around him, making sure to CC him whenever possible, or smoke bombing while killing other targets so that he couldn't intervene. I then ran to the market to drink and replenish my health. You can do this in full view of the Horde, because no one wants to aggro the guards. Usually. The shadow priest, perhaps enraged at my cowardice and refusal to engage him in 1v1 combat, decided otherwise and attacked me. His assault forced me to Vanish, but it also aggroed the guards. In order to avoid spawning more NPC guards the shadow priest fled from the market and out into the wild while I watched the combat from the shadows. My respect for this guy increased as I watched him tank, and slowly begin to kill, four NPC guards. I started emoting /cheers and /applause as he killed the guards one by one. Emotes can still be read by players from opposing factions, and he would have known that I was out there close by even if he couldn't see me. The last guard dropped to the ground with the shadow priest at half health and all his major CDs spent. At this point I jumped him, unleashed all my CDs, and killed him.

That priest probably thought that he could have killed me on equal terms, and he would have been right. The fact that he couldn't do it because I wouldn't fight fair or just kept dodging him probably drove him/her nuts, and made me, a grown ass man in his 30's, giggle like a demented school girl. The funny thing is that I have the utmost respect for the WoW PvP ladder – if you have achieved higher ratings than me I consider you a better player than me, no excuses, and no questions asked. The numbers don't lie, especially over time and number of matches played. In world PvP though, I am willing to exploit every dirty, low-down and despicable trick in the book to stay alive and keep ganking. The best response against gankers is to show that you don't care, either by flying off, just continuing about your business, or taking a quick time out. If you stop to retaliate, or swap to an Alliance toon and rant to me in whispers, it just means you have dropped to my level and are playing my game.

Cross Realm Exploits

The advent of cross realm technology has had a number of implications for WoW open world PvP. People who scream bloody murder about being ganked while doing PvE content can now escape to other, more peaceful realms if they are fortunate enough to have a friend on real ID. People can farm across realms – a few weeks ago my friends and I farmed Warbringers across three different servers simply by virtue of switching leads and phasing into the current leader's server. One of the biggest objections to faction imbalance lies in the fact that the minority faction doesn't have access to a similarly sized pool of players to call to for assistance. This is no longer true with cross realm technology – theoretically you now have a region wide pool of players to call upon. The best defence to ganks is having friends, and this is why ganking is a good thing in a virtual world because it encourages socialization and grouping. Speaking from the side of the ganker, people questing in pairs is enough to deter me from attempting a gank, and seems a small price to pay in a place nominally called a massive MULTIPLAYER online world.

Of course cross realm tech is a double-edged sword, and what can work for gankees can work for gankers too. Because world PvP is so meaningless in WoW, gankers who are anti-social by nature are typically loners, operating by themselves. There is no real incentive to create groups, which is why these type of wolf packs are rare. However, if you are an anti-social social like myself, there exists fertile ground to exploit cross realm tech to bring ruin to the unsuspecting inhabitants of Illidan. It involves me making a group with someone in my present guild in Illidan and then inviting a corresponding number of people from my main server (Thorium Brotherhood) to join the group. Cross server technology anchors the party leader in their current realm as long as the number of people from the current realm is equal or more than the number of people pulled from other servers. In simpler terms, if I have myself and another Illidan player in my group I can invite two more people from a different server and keep the group anchored in Illidan. If I wanted to invite three people from a different server I would need to have at least three Illidan players in the raid to keep the raid in Illidan, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, as long as the number of players on Illidan is equal or more than the number of any single group of players from another server you will be able to keep the party/raid in Illidan. For example, if I had three players from Illidan, three from Thorium Brotherhood, two from Tichondrius and one from Darkspear, the raid would remain in Illidan despite having a net aggregate of six non-Illidan players. This is due to the fact that the number of players on Illidan is equal to or more than the any other single group of non-Illidan players within the raid.

Beating a hasty retreat to the bottom of Halfhill. There's a pack of angry Horde at the top of the hill sweeping the area for Mutley and I.

I'm hoping to exploit cross realm tech to bring friends across to Illidan and create stealth groups that can gank two or more targets in a single fight. As a lone ganker I can be a nuisance, but my effectiveness is severely curtailed by the simple expedient of pairing or grouping by the enemy. I'm always under a time crunch at Halfhill because of the number of Horde present in the area. It's pretty easy to dispatch AFKers and unskilled 90s in about 10-15 seconds (less if not in full Grievous), but against experienced players who use their defensive CDs correctly this can go on for much longer. Healers and tanks take exponentially much longer to kill, if at all, depending on gear and skill level, and those classes pretty much get a pass if I chance upon them in Halfhill. If I can bring a friend or two or three along however, the potential for carnage is magnified dramatically and our range of targets increases to encompass everyone.

Preliminary Skirmishes

I tried this out by inviting a boomkin friend of mine over to Illidan, and we ended up having a ball. It seems that while a single rogue is considered an annoyance a pair of Alliance working together are rebel scum that must be exterminated. After a few kills a massive posse of Horde arrived to sweep the area, and massive AOEs rained down in the area around Halfhill. Rain of fire, blizzards, flares, death and decays, typhoons, you name it – the wrath of the old Testament was unleashed around that inn. It's a wonder that it didn't burn to the ground. At one point a lock was systematically sweeping the river that flowed beside Halfhill, exterminating the local fish stock as he called down a rain of fire that eventually traversed a significant section of the waterway. Still, as gankers we kept a close eye on those that strayed a little too far out, and hit them when they were isolated. We were made to pay on a number of occasions, but by in large we were able to keep out of trouble and leave a proportionally large number of skeletal remains around Halfhill. Once again, the biggest threats to us were Heroically PvE geared players. One on one a Heroically geared player can kill another player wearing full Grievous in about 4-5 seconds. The only defense against those guys was to either avoid them or CC them out while we killed their more vulnerable comrades then getting the hell out of there before retribution could be brought to bear. Not the most honourable way of fighting, but it was the only option we had, and besides, we're gankers – we have no honour. If there had been a clear opportunity to get a good 2v1 against one of these guys we would have taken it, but we never could find the time and space to have a go – there were always too many Horde about during the session we played.

This lock is Heroically PvE geared and is a major threat in world PvP. Heroically geared players can kill players in full Grievous in 4-5 seconds. Season 15 is coming in a fortnight, however, and soon the wheel will turn once again in favour of the PvPers.

In the future I'm hoping to bring at least a posse of three stealth gankers back to Halfhill and record the ensuing battles for blogging posterity. In the past my guild used to pick fights on Thorium Brotherhood by taking a 10 man raid to Orgrimmar, camping in the entrance tunnel, and timing how long it took before the Horde finally dug us out and wiped us. We were able to get the City Attacker achievement by continually attacking the Horde capital this way, but once we had the achievement our guild lost interest in coming back. I don't know why I'm even bothering attacking Halfhill, because we don't even have the veneer of hunting achievements to justify the organizational cost. Unfortunately in the absence of strategic objectives, factional relevance or jeopardy this is as good as it gets. I think I give WoW too much of a hard time about not having meaningful world PvP - WoW is just not the game I want it to be, and it's not its fault. I don't think it has ever advertised itself as a world PvP game the way Dark Age of Camelot, EVE and Darkfall have done, so really all my whinging and whining is akin to me staring at a cat wishing it was a dog and bitching because it isn't. WoW is a game of many parts, but it is primarily PvE, with a robust, competitive but disconnected ladder PvP competition on the side. Open world PvP is meaningless, unbalanced and just an afterthought. My rogue's dilemma and search for purpose has almost become an existential one, and she wanders a world devoid of meaning, filling her time with brief encounters with strangers that end in grief for one or both of them.

"Why in God's name are you a cat instead of a DOG?!?"

Bloody hell, that's a little too close to home for my liking.

The release of TESO is now just under a month away (for people like myself who have pre-ordered the early access edition) and with it my days as a rogue ganker on Illidan are coming to an end. This series has just about run its course – I don't think I have too much more to add about ganking as a topic in WoW, but I do look forward to picking the topic up again in the world of Tamriel. People who have slogged through my long winded posts will know that I divide WoW PvP into two basic types – open world PvP and ladder PvP. The former is meaningless and unbalanced due to the lack of strategic objectives, PvE/PvP gear differential and massive faction imbalances tolerated by Blizzard. The latter is very competitive but is really just a MOBA (massive online battle arena) separate from the MMO world it purportedly inhabits. Despite their differences I enjoy both flavours, and as Season 14 has come to an end, I thought this would be a good idea to summarise my going-ons in both formats of PvP.

Halfhill Shennanigans on Illidan

Last weekend, as per my desire to bring a gank squad to the Horde dominated server of Illidan, my sister and I managed to rope in two local rogues to go ganking with us in Halfhill. Rather than write about it, I condensed an hour of gameplay into a 15 minute ganking clip and linked it below. My sister brought her restoration druid to the fray, and we were both on Skype so we were able to coordinate our movements to some degree. In this video you can see my messed-up control method, which consists of mouse turning when not in combat, and then reverting back to keyboard turning once in melee. To become a complete mouse turner I will have to purchase a specialised gaming mouse which has buttons for my abilities. What is happening is that I am mouse turning to look around out of combat, but once I engage in combat my right hand (which is my mouse hand) moves to the keypad where my abilities are bound. If I had a Razor Naga I could move those abilities to the mouse instead, and thus be able to maintain mouse turning while having access to my keybinds at the same time. This is what the pros do, and it is something I will have to do if I want to break the 2k barrier in ladder PvP. Luckily I don't even need to be good to kill someone in OWPvP. I can just bring friends, attack people when they are AFK or busy, and we can rack up those kills without any problems. I killed an Arena Master in the session I filmed – he was AFK at the FP and I had two other rogues assisting me – but hey, a kill is a kill, dammit. Right? Right?

Season 14 Wrap-Up

When I'm not ganking around Halfhill I spend my time in WoW pushing rating in 3s, 5s and Rated BGs on my holy paladin. My team mates and I are intermediate players, which means we are above 1550 but below 2000. My 5s team consists of myself, my sister, an affliction warlock named Coronaxtra, and an unholy DK named Ratsac. Ratsac and Coronaxtra are long time team mates. Corona was my 2s partner for the longest time, and we used to play 2s together before the new 25 minute time limit was introduced. The number of 45 minute games we played back in the day are mind-boggling to think about now. Corona is a great player and a very laid back guy - he achieved the rank of Duelist (top 0.5-3% of the active player curve) back in BC but I always poke fun at him about it because firstly, he did it before WoW started recording achievements and so there is no record of him ever doing it; secondly, he did it in 2s which is the most unbalanced out of all the brackets; and finally, he did with a resto druid in an era when there were no such things as diminishing returns. Can you imagine eating 6 second Cyclones and 8 second Fears without any respite whatsoever? People who complain about the game having too much CC nowadays have seem to forgotten the era in BC where you could literally be CCed FOREVER. For the uninitiated or non-PvPers diminishing returns halves the duration of CCs if caught within 15-19 seconds of a similar CC until the player is immune for a period of 15-19 seconds after the last CC is cast. Managing the time between CCs and knowing when to use your escapes is crucial, so much so that Gladius (a very common Arena add-on) tracks not only current CCs and trinket availability, but also diminishing returns (DR) in its display. Using your trinket to escape a double DRed Cyclone (duration of 1.5 seconds) is just plain silly and a waste of an ability which has a two minute CD.

My other team mate Ratsac is another great player in both formats of the game. He used to be a Heroic raider, but got introduced into PvP during Cataclysm and has never looked back. I actually think that Ratsac is a 2k player - he just hasn't found the right team to integrate into. In a sense, I think I am holding him back, because I really believe that he could slot into a 2k team and the team wouldn't lose a beat. People could say that he is being carried in this scenario, but in the 3s format carrying 1/3^rd of your entire team's effective strength is actually harder than people make it out to be. Having two stronger players will lift the weaker player's personal rating but each combination of players has a cap they will eventually plateau at based on the combined strength of the team, and the weaker the weakest link is, the lower this cap will be. It's easier to carry someone in Rated BGs where the team is only carrying 1/10^th of their effective strength. I know some players who could never be carried to 2k in 3s – despite the best efforts of the other two players the handicap imposed by the weak player would be insurmountable. Unkind, but true for some, and perhaps applicable to myself. Ratsac, however, could jump into a 2k team and acquit himself without any problems.

My sister Lelle (her main) makes up the final part of our regular foursome, and I had previously considered her the weak link of the team (I hope she never reads this, otherwise she is going to kill me). Recently, however, she has hit form big time on her warrior and her restoration druid, and the pressure is on for me to keep up with my team mates and not be the weakest link. My sister and I have similar temperaments, and some of our biggest quarrels have occurred in the context of WoW PvP. It might be laughable to say WoW can be a tool for personal growth, but after a particularly vicious argument I took a long hard look at myself and decided that I was an asshole. Since that incident I have never argued with team mates ever again, and backed off from trying to micro manage the whole team. It's funny thought how things which you tolerate in strangers and casual acquaintances are magnified when it comes to family. My sister and I have had nonsense arguments about small things which I wouldn't have cared about with other people. I have become aware of this peculiarity of human relations, and take great care now to keep an even keel when playing with my sister. If I do lose my rag (which is happily becoming a much rarer event nowadays), I switch off my mike and vent, then get back on once the moment passes. I drove away my sister's best friend Rykester (his old main) from WoW by being a bastard Rated BG leader, and I am resolved that this will never happen again. I am getting a second chance in TESO (our old crew is reassembling to play that game) and regardless of what happens in that game I am determined that people who group with me will never have any cause to regret it. I have learned (or am constantly trying to learn) to cultivate Zen by playing computer games. It is a retarded thing to say, but there it is.

This season, however, has been a particularly good one for our team ratings-wise. We established a number of personal bests in both 3s and 5s, and broke through a plateau we had been stuck on for a long time. The timing was quite ironic as I had already pretty much lamented to my team mates that this was as good I was going to get, and that I might as well call it a day for ladder PvP. The very next session we got the 1750+ achievement in 3s, which was the personal best for our whole team in that bracket. Ratsac, Lelle (on her warrior Qualar) and I ran a TSG comp (DK, warrior and holy paladin) and in this session I did everything I normally don't do – I abandoned cover in favour of aggressive CCing, I didn't save my CDs, and most importantly, I put my faith in Ratsac and Qualar to get the job done instead of trying to control everything. Our plan was just to bum rush the enemy, preferably a healer, and get a kill in less than two minutes because I could guarantee that they could stay alive and completely aggressive for that amount of time. If the game went on any longer than two minutes we usually lost, but it was surprisingly effective most of the time. I shut up, did my job, and the net result was that we broke the plateau and got the achievement in 3s. I believe we could have pushed further, but that session was our last 3s push for the season.

The session after our 3s push we hit our personal bests in 5s, and ended the season at approximately 1850+. I have unofficially pushed up to 1900+ in the past, but our final rating of 1853 in 5s is a new official (meaning it is recorded in the statistics page of our character's Armoury profiles) personal best for all of us. It makes me really happy that we got it as a team and not with people we don't regularly play with. Our biggest problem has been finding a 5^th, and we have tried various people in the slot, with varying degrees of success. We tried bringing a good friend and guildie in a role, but he was simply not good enough, and our combo capped out at about 1600+. This is the problem with ladder competition. Ladder PvP in WoW is structured in such a way that the player base is splintered into small groups based on skill level. This is a natural consequence of ladder competition – you naturally group with people around your own skill level. Better players than yourself generally want better team mates, and vice versa – you don't want to play with players whom you consider worse than you. This is fine if your primary goal is pushing rating, but poses problems if you simply want to play with your friends due to the spread of skill levels. The only possible way to play with friends in a ladder competition is to play at the lowest level of the group, and work your way from there. In TESO I am looking forward to playing with friends of mine who love computer games but have woeful hand-eye coordination which precluded them from playing Arenas and Rated BGs. By the same token it will be good to play with other friends of mine who I keep in touch with on Real ID but don't play with because they have far eclipsed me in terms of PvP rating and skill. In open world PvP numbers are a tangible advantage. Everyone counts, and that is a wonderful thing for games. We can all contribute, and this type of cooperation creates strong social bonds and factional identity. Ladder competition is very stark in that it illuminates exactly where you are on the bell curve. Furthermore the small team sizes keep socialisation to a requisite minimum, and you end up socialising with people based not on real life considerations such as character, demeanour or attitude, but rather on how well they can push buttons in a computer game.

To solve our 5s conundrum I tried swapping to a DPS toon and finding another healer on OQueue, but that only got us up to 1700+ and we hit another plateau there. On the last weekend of Season 14, however, I fished around in OQueue for a good warrior and was lucky enough to find one around our level. Like the rest of us, Themerciless was an intermediate player who hadn't broken 2k. Unlike us however, he had come pretty bloody close (1995 in 3s and 1879 in 5s), and he was the final piece of the puzzle. We kind of stumbled into our composition (we all have a gazillion fully geared alts we could use) and our tactics, but somehow the combination worked, and we got better as the games progressed. Our overall game plan became applying dot pressure on the whole enemy team with Ratsac's diseases and Corona's DoTs, while Themerciless applied single target pressure with his warrior. Lelle and I would also attempt to CC enemy healers whenever we could while keeping our team alive and offensive. Corona was our main CCer on paper, but in practice he was the tank because he was always the primary target of the enemy. Our big go-to combo (which again, was not pre-planned, but evolved over the course of our games) was for Ratsac to use Gorefiend's Grasp to grip the whole team to Themerciless, who would then Bladestorm around him for huge AoE damage. Corona would try to follow with an AoE stun on top of the clustered enemy, meaning that they would have to sit in the Bladestorm for at least 3 seconds. It was a vicious combo, and it served us well when it worked. I have recorded some of our games and posted it below – you can see the tactic evolve over the course of the games (i.e. watch the first and last games).

Season 15 and Beyond

I was going to quit WoW after Season 14, but the lure of the 2k achievement remains very strong. I will definitely play TESO because I have roped in friends and family to come with me, but I may not unsubscribe from WoW just yet. This season is significant because for the first time players are ranked together by region instead of Battlegroups. This means rank one means exactly that. Previously the top players in each group were ranked first in their own respective Battlegroups, which meant that there were plenty of “rank one” Gladiators in North America, who then proceeded to talk smack about the relative strengths and perceived weaknesses of the various groups. No longer. Rank one means rank one in North America (and Oceania, since the two are merged), not rank one in Vengeance or Bloodlust or whatever Battlegroup the player used to belong to. Similarly PvP titles will now be region wide, so any titles won will be a true reflection of one's standing in the region. This is why the last weekend of Season 14 was such a hotbed of frenetic activity on Twitch TV – all the rank one aspirants were frenetically trying to get pole position before the season came to a close. There are a lot of familiar names in the 3v3 leaderboard - 2012 World Champions Snutz and Venruki are placed first and second respectively, and I also recognise Chanimal at 7th, who was in the 2013 World Championship winning Skill Capped team.

Final standings in 3v3 (the tournament format) at the end of Season 14.

On a personal level the 2k achievement remains the Holy Grail of WoW PvP for me, and it has never seemed as achievable as it has been recently. I would really like to get the title of Rival, too. I have gotten Challenger consistently since Season 6, which puts me squarely in the top 10-35% of the active PvP player base, but getting Rival would make me one of the top 10%. The information on Arenamate.net states that the cut-off for Rival in Season 14 was 1829 in 3s (and 2156 in 5s) – this is eminently achievable for our team given what we have done this season (we reached 1755 in our last push), and is something to shoot for in the future if we keep playing ladder PvP. Realistically my best chance at getting a 2k rating will be in either the 5s or the Rated BG format, and the Rival title if I work on my 3s and push to the mid 1800s. In terms of OWPvP, however, my days of ganking on Illidan are coming to a close with the imminent release of TESO. It looks like I will have two different games to scratch two different itches – WoW for the ladder PvP, and TESO for meaningful open world PvP.

Just when I thought I was out - they pull me back in...

Opinions and Predictions

The release of TESO is nigh, and I thought that this might be a good time to collate some of the vast and wildly varying opinions about the game under one roof. I intend this post to be a time capsule of sorts, so that in a year's time I can look back and see who the most prescient and far-sighted writers were, and who were just flat-out wrong. There are many claims of looming epic failure – chief amongst them the article written by Paul Fuckface in Forbes, in which he grandiosely claims that TESO will be the “biggest video game disaster of 2014” - but I wish to keep this civil, and refrain from stooping to personal insults and childish name calling to get my point across. I'm an unapologetic TESO fan boy, but I firmly believe that this has not diluted my objectivity by one iota, as it patently clear to all who have eyes that TESO IS THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME. Everything I have seen and read tells me that this is a game I will like, so obviously on a personal level the game has already been a success. As for everyone else – well, take a look.

Quick disclaimer - all opinions and predictions have been pulled from blogs, websites or on comments on blogs, and have been linked to their source, as well as the author's blog. All errors, misrepresentations and out-of-context readings are my sole responsibility. For a better and more considered presentation of each author's perspective I urge the reader to follow the links to their site, and not take anything that is expressed on this post at face value.

Screenshot by Araxes over at the Rat Warlock.

Name	Blog/Website	Opinions	Decisions/Predictions	Source
Andrew Ross	Massively website	This is the very feature that is perplexing me about The Elder Scrolls Online: Multiplayer at this early stage seems irrelevant. ...the few choice I've made (when given an option) didn't seem to change anything, in contrast to my experience with SWTOR's conversation trees and dice roll-offs that created reasons to repeat quests, both alone and in groups.	Like many people, I fully expect the game to go either free-to-play or buy-to-play eventually, and I've felt that "founder burn" from other single-player-with-multiplayer-options RPG before. The question of how much the game will be worth after a conversion is too strong in my mind to ignore. I just don't think the value is there right now for an MMO player like me, and I don't see an easy fix, with or without PvP.	Website 14 Feb 2014
Araxes	The Rat Warlock	TESO is a gorgeous, gorgeous game. It’s undoubtedly the most beautiful MMO I’ve played to date, and it rivals many single-player games, as well. The visuals are as good as anything in Skyrim. In some cases, better.	It's not out to break the mold and it’s not going to redefine anything in the genre, but it’s a lot of fun. If you enjoy a good, solid MMO with linear PVE, faction-based PVP in restricted areas, gorgeous scenery, interesting classes with unique ways to grow your character, you’ll be right at home.	Blog 17 Feb 2014
Belghast	Tales of the Aggronaut	At its core this is in fact The Elder Scrolls… Online. This game lives and breathes the Elder Scrolls Lore and settings, and is immediately recognizable the first time you see a creature made famous by the series out in the wild. I am not normally a fan of player versus player in any game. However Elder Scrolls has me more than a bit excited to be honest. We are finally returning to the most successful PvP set up that any game has had… the Frontiers of Dark Age of Camelot.	This is the type of game that grows on you over time. The biggest problem is you cannot go into playing it with the expectations of it being something else. I feel like this game is trying to start its own little genre. There is more than enough meat on its bones to allow players to happily explore it for hundreds and hundreds of hours.	Blog 15 Feb 2014
Bhagpuss	Inventory Full	I don't have any residual affection for the IP so if it ends up appealing to me even in the slightest I'll be both surprised and delighted. Plenty of other people, however, are very heavily invested indeed and when an MMO gets made from an IP that people love it doesn't often seem to go down as well as either the developers or the fans might hope or expect. LotRO might be the exception although even that's had its ups and downs, but the commercial and/or artistic history of the rest - SWG, SW:ToR, Warhammer, AoC, STO, DDO, Lego Universe, to name just a few of the better-known - well, it doesn't make pretty reading.	TESO...looks set to disappoint just about everyone.	Blog 30 Dec 2013
Clockwork	Out of Beta	Steak-Flavored Tofu. My interest in TESO…has been lukewarm at best and stirred to a ball of incoherent rage at worst. …linear, end-game focused monstrosity.	An MMO is where a franchise goes to die.	Blog 11 Feb 2014
Doone	T.R. Red Skies / XP Chronicles	…the open world aspect of the single player game are its heart. If Zenimax ignores this to opt for the theme park, they'll be drying their tears on their shirts, not with the c-notes they think they'll rake in by developing the game in this way.	The beta has been thoroughly underwhelming. My expectations for this game are non-existent.	Out of Beta 11 Feb 2014 (comment dated 16 Feb 2014)
Duke of O	Null Signifier	TWO THUMBS UP!!! I've tried other MMOs. But this one is the best! Before I played TESO no girl would look twice at me. Now I have to beat them off with a stick! Thank you TESO! TESO will lower your blood cholesterol and keep you regular! It will also keep your skin smooth as silk, while removing disfiguring acne and blemishes. Better than SEX!	Will add fuel to the F2P/Sub debate for months to come. Skyrim purists will hate the game. MMO purists will hate the game. Tobold will straddle the middle ground, and then ask meekly, “Should I play this game?” while having no intent to do so as a way to drum up blogging traffic. He will also initiate more flame wars with Richard Bartle by calling him “self-referential” rather than “narcissistic”. Hackers will find a way to fly with the Elder Scrolls, prompting hundreds of awed player to flood fan sites with requests as to where this particular skill can be found. Gold sellers will spam Cyrodiil general chat with discount gold and power levelling services, proving once again, that in the end, the gold farmers always win. The first Emperor will be someone either pre-pubescent or unemployed. Hail the Emperor! The second Emperor will be found dead in an Internet cafe, having tragically overdosed on Red Bull, instant noodles and Burger Rings. The Aldmeri Dominion will try to hold a solemn in-game funeral but the ceremony will be crashed by Ebonheart Pact forces who got lost on their way to an objective due to Team Speak issues. Much hand-wringing and forum flaming ensues. In the meantime, the Daggerfall Covenant takes advantage of all the commotion and crowns the third Emperor. The third Emperor will be a Korean WCS Starcraft 2 player on a sabbatical, and he illustrates the gulf between normal players and tournament players by killing everyone in Cyrodiil. On a non-gaming mouse. Left handed. Gevlon will declare TESO solely for morons and slackers and continue to push for harsher death penalties in EVE Online as a way of increasing subs and welcoming newbies to New Eden. The most popular names will be Nerevar or Dovakhiin, or derivatives thereof. Coming a close second will be LeetPvP, Ipwnubitches or Noobslayer. A character named James will be banned for using a name that doesn't conform to role-playing conventions. An overzealous feminist writer will get offended at the representation of the Khajit, declaring indignantly that “pussies don’t wear armour like that.” Male misogynists will counter “Oh hell yes they do” and then spam comments on the feminists website, using the rationale that if they use enough gibberish no one will be able to engage in any real debate. PvErs will demand that Cyrodiil be turned into a voluntary flagging area because they hate PvP. PvPers will demand that that the starting areas be turned into PvP zones because they hate PvE. Zenimax will ignore both parties, then release a new Malukah video as a way of soothing the unruly mob. “Beware, beware, the Dragonborn comes…” WoW will shamelessly rip off the Cyrodiil idea in their own world PvP zone come the next expansion and show that when it comes to keeping the money flowing in, they are the undisputed masters of the MMO genre. Belghast wants TESO to succeed because he loves the MMO genre. Scree wants TESO to fail because he loves the MMO genre. My cat took a piss because it loves the MMO genre. THE DAGGERFALL COVENANT WILL PWN ALL. The Aldmeri Dominion and the Ebonheart Pact will try but fail miserably. Yeah, bitches. Sup.	Blog 11 Mar 2014
Eliot Lefebvre	Massively website	I've always had a profound antipathy toward the Elder Scrolls franchise. I've also never seen anything that's reached out and grabbed me, no inspiring bits of lore, no systems that particularly grab my interest, just the promise that "you can do anything you want" without a great deal of encouragement.	Unless you're an enormous fan of the Elder Scrolls franchise, there's not much to recommend ESO right now. It's another generic fantasy MMO in a field already filled with them. And I just don't get it.	Website 7 Feb 2014
Jaedia	Jaedia's Menagerie	I mean it’s Elder Scrolls in an MMO setting, I’m bound to adore it. I love fantasy. I love MMOs. I love exploration. It’s right up my street. But I’m not happy, guys…I just can’t justify spending £50 on a game that I’d then have to pay £8.99 per month on on top of that.	I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this game doesn’t do as well as they seem to be expecting…putting a price tag on everything is not the way to win loyalty, which is really what’s at stake here.	Blog 30 Jan 2014
Joseph Skyrim	JVT Workshop	It is pretty cool and fantastically beautiful. ...the instances were very "phase" heavy. If I was playing with a friend and I happened to finish a quest before or differently as to how he did in an area then we wouldn't see each other despite standing in the same spot. This is to keep with our individual immersion I guess, but I can see how that will be problematic later.	In the state I experienced the game at, I'm forced to only score it 2 dragons out of 5. Hopefully Zenimax fixes up all the broken pieces before release because this would easily double its score. Will I pay to play it though? That's a silly question. Of course not.	Blog 16 Feb 2014
J3w3l	Healing the Masses	Tamriel is just beautiful. That's B-e-a-utiful. Sometimes the breadth of all this story and lore is a little overwhelming to me. I didn’t feel as strangled by the design when questing through ESO which is an amazing feeling. I could go as fast or slow as I wanted. I could stay on the path or venture out and there was a lot out there to find if I wanted story, experience, gear or other rewards and I felt like I had more time to just experience my surroundings.	...do we even think this is a fair fight? (between TESO and Wildstar)	Blog 8 Mar 2014
Paul Tassi	Forbes Online	MMOs as a genre may not be dead yet, but the monthly subscription model certainly is for new entries, and Bethesday/ZeniMax were foolish not to have the foresight to realize this.	In short, Bethesda and Zenimax spend an ungodly amount of money developing a game for an audience that may not even exist. We’ve seen a number of high profile online launch disasters recently, and The Elder Scrolls Online seems like a prime candidate for a similar meltdown. The biggest video game disaster of 2014.	Website 2 Jan 2014
Scree	The Cynic Dialogues	(talking about Wildstar) What's a bigger testament for a game's success and justification for your passion for a title than to see it succeed and its gaming population flourish.	(talking about TESO) I am entirely opposed to this game succeeding.	Blog 5 Mar 2014
Syl	MMO Gypsy	My admittedly short beta testings were a painfully disappointing experience and while they might not be completely fair or balanced, they are lacking in ways that cannot be made up by playing the game longer or praying for the unlikely wonders of another two months of final polishing. My issues with the game are of no subtle nature – they are fundamental.	I don’t intend on buying at launch, in fact I am not sure I’m gonna buy at all for as long as there is also a monthly subscription.	Blog 16 Feb 2014
Syncaine	Hardcore Casual	…the first area is 100% linear, the second feels like a typical themepark zone, and the third feels like a comfortable cross between a full open world and an MMO themepark.	Pre-ordered the digital collectors edition, in part because I think the game will be a good time, and also in part because the genre blows outside of spaceships. If ESO has less than 500k subs across all platforms after the first 6 months, the game will be a failure. I don’t believe that will be the case.	Blog 14 Feb 2014
Syp	Bio Break	I’m not a fan of the game world, but more than that, the game itself looks so incredibly dull. There’s precious little innovation here and I’m deeply concerned that ZeniMax/Bethesda doesn’t really understand the MMO industry and is perhaps stubbornly ignoring lessons of the past by assuming that ESO will succeed by the virtue of its name alone.	I wouldn’t have chosen ESO to be such an ambassador, not with how it’s being made and positioned, but I don’t have a say in that matter. So instead, I’m hoping for all of our sake that it does well enough to avoid the type of downfall and backlash that some love to perpetuate.	Blog 6 Mar 2014
Tremayne	Tremayne's Law	I had an absolute blast that was both reminiscent of my favourite DAoC memories and included some fun new twists.	One brutal, close-quarters fight later we had lost but the general consensus in chat was “That’s awesome, let’s do it again!” When the gamers on the LOSING side say that, there’s something very right with the game.	Blog 5 Mar 2014
Wilhelm Arcturus	The Ancient Gaming Noob	I can say the game feels like Skyrim…The intro is very linear, as with Skyrim, and everybody is extremely patient while you get your bearings and try to find your way out… as with Skyrim. While I still think a Borderlands 2 4-player co-op model with plenty of post launch DLC was the winning move for an Elder Scrolls game, the MMO version still works.	And will I be pre-ordering it and playing the game at launch? No. Not because I do not like the game...I just don’t need another MMO to play and nobody with whom I play with regularly is interested in the game at this point. So I will be sticking with WoW and EVE Online for now.	Blog 17 Feb 2014
Wolfshead	Wolfshead Online	There seems to be no compelling reason to be a part of this virtual world. There are no revolutionary features here that excite me. The lack of social cohesion, challenge, danger and dynamic content is also troubling.	I was very excited about Elder Scrolls Online. I had even pre-ordered the collectors edition with the figurine but after the first beta weekend I cancelled it as I could not reconcile paying $120 for another unambitious, predictable MMO theme park.	Blog 5 Mar 2014

Another screenshot by Araxes.

Non-Facetious Predictions

On a more serious note, here are my non-facetious predictions for TESO based on the following questions:

Will the game be free to play in a year's time (4 April 2015)?
How many subscribers will the game have in a year's time?
What Metacritic score will the game receive on release (measured at the end of April 2014)?
How many subscribers will TESO have at its peak?

My responses are as follows:

The game will NOT go free-to-play in a year's time. Residual love for the single player IP, a robust but accessible PvP end game reminiscent of DAOC, and sufficient differential from the WoW model will ensure that TESO will carve out its own comfortable niche.
Subscriptions will stabilize between 500,000 to 1 million players. Whether you consider this to be a success or not will depend on which of the remaining hold-outs of subscription based MMOs you are comparing this figure to, whether that be WoW (7.8 million), Final Fantasy 14 (1.8 million - thank you, Bhagpuss), EVE Online (500,000) or Darkfall 2 (20,000). I don't believe comparisons to free-to-play titles like Guild Wars 2 (460,000 concurrent users at its peak) or SWTOR (350,000 concurrent users at its peak) are valid because F2P pay models allow a more generous user count, but the numbers are included there just for a reference.
The game will receive a Metacritic Critics score of over 80 (measured at the end of April 2014). When it comes to personal opinions two quotes come to mind – i) there's no accounting for taste, and ii) opinions are like assholes – everyone has one. My purpose with this prediction is not to advocate the primacy of one opinion over another, but to create an easily measurable metric of success or failure, even if that metric lies in the hands of a handful of journalists in established publications. If TESO scores over 80 then it will have been a “critical” success. It won't make a difference to me if the world likes TESO or not (I'll still play it), but I am interested in finding out whether my preference lies in the majority or the minority, and whether or not the lukewarm reception TESO received in beta has morphed into a more positive spin.
TESO will peak at 1.5 million subscribers. This is a tough one and I have no idea what to base my numbers on, except perhaps on the position of the tea leaves in my morning cuppa, and the alignment of the planets in the solar system. All I know are the peak numbers of past MMOs, which are perhaps as relevant to TESO's future success as the price of tea in China during the days of Marco Polo. Nonetheless, here they are – SWTOR (1.7 million at its peak), Warhammer Online (800,000 at peak) and Dark Age of Camelot (250,000 at peak). I should also add that Skyrim has sold over 20 million copies world wide to date, Oblivion between 3-5 million, and Morrowind over 1 million. How the single player success of Skyrim and its ilk will affect the sales of its MMO half-brother remains to be seen.

For better or worse, those are my projections. Care should be taken with the numbers I quote there, as they're all pulled from the Internet and therefore dodgy as hell. Nonetheless, will time prove me a prophet among prophets, or another blogger with too much time on his hands? Shall I be savouring the fruits of victory, choking on the grapes of another blogger's wrath, or eating a vast serving of humble pie garnished with crow's feet? Only time will tell.

Roll up, roll up, diviners, seers and would-be prognosticators! Care to take a wager?

In the first post of this series I outlined a basic typology of PvP, differentiating between simple PvP, ladder/tournament PvP and world PvP. In the second I argued that asymmetry is a fundamental aspect of world PvP, and posited some reasons as to why rational, self-interested players are willing to tolerate these imbalances and play these types of games. This third post will attempt to examine modes of storytelling found within MMOs. I will argue that meaningful world PvP - defined as PvP encounters in a persistent world which allow players to shape the landscape of the virtual world itself – can be an excellent driver of complex, organic and emergent storytelling.

In my mind storytelling is divided into three basic archetypes:

i) Linear

ii) Branching

iii) Complex

Linear storytelling is the classic narrative, utilising a beginning, middle and end, and can be used to describe traditional forms of media such as books, TV shows and movies. Branching storytelling describes narratives which have divergent paths and alternative endings, and is commonly used in single-player games to great effect. Complex storytelling are narratives derived from the interplay of independent factors, and can be used to describe stories which emerge from classical pen and paper role-playing games, dramatic improvisation and player interactions within MMOs. The most important distinction between these three rudimentary types is that while linear and branching storytelling are derived from a single writer (or team of writers), the writers of complex narratives are the agents within the system itself. History itself is a type of complex narrative, as the story of humanity has no single author, but rather emerges as the product of the vast interplay of independent agents. Linear and branching storytelling is top-down, while complex storytelling is bottom-up.

Linear Storytelling

Linear storytelling is a staple of the RPG genre in both single and multi-player formats. It is characteristic of traditional forms of media such as books, TV and film, and like these formats what differentiates between the good and the bad is the quality of the story being told and how well it is presented. Linear stories can be utilised to good effect as a way of encouraging the player to advance the plot with gameplay. A game with a great story might be able to get away with mediocre gameplay if the player's desire to see how the story unfolds offsets their dissatisfaction with the core mechanics. Linear storytelling in MMOs isn't necessarily bad, but can be criticised on the grounds that it fails to take advantage of the interactivity inherent within gaming.

Branching Storytelling

Branching paths and alternate endings are the second step up in the hierarchy of game design, and contemporary RPGs such as The Witcher,Mass Effect and the Dragon Age series reflect this aesthetic. In subsequent iterations MMOs have created the illusion of impact via the use of phasing, which alters the game world around the player based on the quests they have completed but has no effect at all on the world perceived by other players. This has led to what some commentators derisively call the single player MMO – everyone is a hero, carrying around their own personal delusion of grandeur while in the persistent world the same NPC is asking another player to kill 10 more rats. In TESO, for example, the Prophet who frees you from Coldharbour is a mentor and guide to the player, the same way he is to the tens of thousands of other “Vestiges” working their way through the main quest. During my time in the TESO beta I was given a choice as to which group of NPCs I would assist. I chose one over the other, the others died, and those NPCs subsequently disappeared from my version of the world. I know I am being tricked by phasing slight-of-hand, but essentially this is what happens in branching stories in both the single and multi-player variants – your choices affect the game world you personally experience.

Choose your own adventure books! Ah, the nostalgia.

Fighting Fantasy books combined the branching plots of Choose Your Own Adventure books with roleplaying conventions and random elements (via dice, coin flipping or flipping the pages for a random number.

Complex Storytelling

The biggest criticism of the use of linear and branching types of storytelling within MMOs is that it fails to utilise the key ingredient which differentiates MMOs from single player games – the presence of other players. It can be argued that traditional storytelling is a type of dialogue between the author-designer and the reader-player. The only real agent within the system is the player, and the kinds of stories which emerge from these types of narratives will always be identical, or confined to a small sub-set of possibilities demarcated by the author-designer. If you've played through Deus Ex, Mass Effect or The Witcher I will know the general outline of the story you experienced (albeit changed in minor ways due to the decisions you took in making your way to the end) because the core story remains the same for everyone. Even branching narratives become decoded eventually as players follow the branches to their final destinations and get an overview of the underlying structure beneath. If linear games are supposed to be about completing the game, then branching games become more about achieving the “best” possible ending and/or experiencing the whole spectrum of endings on offer.

A Choose Your Own Adventure text decoded into its underlying structure.

Complex storytelling, on the other hand, could be said to be the narrative of events which occurs when varying actors and agents interact with each other. I use the word complex in the scientific sense of the word, meaning arising from the interaction of comparatively simpler elements. While complex stories can be something as simple as three player characters walking into a bar, it is considered “complex” because it arose from the independent actions of different agents, as opposed to something which is scripted by a singular author-developer. It is a spontaneous and emergent property. Complex stories are player anecdotes, tall stories, reminiscences and pseudo-histories of events which occur within a system. Classic pen and paper role playing games are an example of complex storytelling. The game master (GM) sets the stage, the world and the overarching plot, while the players are characters adventuring in the world presented before them. While the player characters are completely free to follow the narrative trail laid out by the GM, they are also free to wander off it. Good GMs are considered to be those who allow their players the freedom to deviate from the path laid out before them, and in these situations both the player and the GM improvise together to create a new story. Improvisation in drama and theatre can also be considered a type of complex storytelling. In improvisation the actors are given their motivations, goals and settings, and then asked to play out a scene with fellow actors without the script. This type of exercise is useful in drama because deviating from the script often brings out new interpretations which had not been previously considered. As a young undergraduate I dabbled in some really bad student theatre and I always enjoyed standing on an empty stage when no one was around. For me the stage was an empty space rife with infinite possibilities – comedy, tragedy and everything in between could and were made manifest within its boundaries. Similarly I view MMO worlds as a stage for which all sorts of player driven narratives can emerge.

A model of complex adaptive behaviour. This model can also be used to describe the rise of complex stories in MMOs. Substitute "Complex Narratives" for "Complex Adaptive Behaviour", and you have a perfectly adequate model of how stories "emerge" from the interactions of the players. Note too that the types of stories produced by these interactions can have a positive or negative feedback effect on the players, creating a type of causal loop which affects the direction of future emergent narratives. In other words, players create the stories and the stories affect the players which then affects future player-generated stories. Furthermore, the system is not closed but accepts information from outside - i.e. how the game and world is designed, the player's own subjective experiences and tastes - as well as outputting information - i.e. blogs, critical reviews, paradigms of game design. Everything is connected. Whoa. Dude.

As far as I'm concerned the only MMO games which have achieved the status of organic, emergent sandboxes are world PvP games like Darkfall and EVE. EVE has spawned alliances, mega-coalitions, heroes, villains, outcasts, mercenaries, trade cartels, industrialists, universities, and massive, record-breaking wars both in terms of player participation and real life monetary cost – all of which are unscripted, emergent and organic. The biggest MMO battle of all time took place in Fountain in July 2013 in EVE, when over 5000 players from CFC and TEST squared off the space opera version of the charge of the light brigade. EVE also has the record for the most expensive battle in MMO history when the CFC and the Russians teamed up to take on N3 and Pandemic Legion in B-R5RB in January 2014. This battle was estimated to have cost between $300,000 to $500,000 in real terms. CCP did not create any of these features – they evolved organically from the interactions of the players themselves. EVE arguably has the best meta-game out of all MMOs to date. William Arcturus wrote an excellent and tongue-in-cheek account of the state of null-sec politics here, but his account has been dated by recent developments. This short history written by James315 describes the current state of null sec in EVE, and it is a very interesting account which rivals real-life historical narratives. It is made even more remarkable by the fact that it was generated by thousands of player characters interacting with each other through conflict and/or cooperation, and not by any single author or teams of authors.

One of my favourite anecdotes regarding EVE is an incident which occurred 2-3 weeks ago. In a nutshell, RvB (according to Gevlon, a catspaw of the Goons, who are the leaders of the CFC), on their way to capture a structure owned by Gevlon (who has been hiring mercenaries to destroy and capture Goon assets in high sec), were interdicted by a group called No Holes Barred, who offered their allegiance to either side for the price of a song. Gevlon declined on principle (or offered to pay ISK instead and was rebuffed, depending on who you believe), RvB agreed to terms, and after hastily assembling a make-shift choir on voice communications and warbling out “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” across the ether, RvB were allowed to pass. To have this type of encounter occur as part of a script is clever writing. To have it happen organically and spontaneously is a thing of beauty. The anecdote is told by at least three different sources - Gevlon, No Holes Barred and RvB - and the real story of what happened in that event depends on who you believe. That is the part of the charm of complex narratives - there is no canon, there is no lore, there is only human nature and interpretation. Just like real history, the battle for the truth is sometimes bigger than the actual battle itself.

PvE as a Driver of Organic Storytelling

It would seem then that if creating complex narratives are the goal then the job of an author-designer lies not in creating overarching narratives and handing them from above to be experienced in virtually the same manner by everyone who plays the game, but rather in creating the actors in the system as best they can and letting the system itself generate the stories. I alluded to good GMs earlier, and part of what makes a good GM is their willingness to relinquish some of their control over to the player characters. The focus should perhaps be on designing the features of the system which will interact with other elements of the system, with the chief of these being the world itself. Complex stories do not arise ex nihilio– GMs have their campaign notes and setting, while actors have character outlines, motivations and interpretations. Similarly sandbox MMOs require a world to serve not as a passive scenic backdrop to the actions of the players, but as an active agent in it of itself. This requires dynamic NPCs with their own agendas, factions which can grow or be eliminated, meaningful weather, seasonal and day/night cycles, and detail, detail, detail. Syncaine and Wolfshead have penned some models for an MMO PvE sandbox, and they are linked here and here respectively. Both writers advocate the creation of AI elements which actively pursue an individual and factional agenda, rather than sitting around idly day and night in the same spot giving out the same quest to everyone they meet.

"I have been standing in this same spot for almost 10 bloody years, day and night, rain or shine, giving the same crappy quest to every idiot who thinks he's some kind of damned hero. Kill me someone, please. Bring on those griefers. And bollocks to respawning."

The best example I can cite of PvE elements creating organic content is, oddly enough, in a single player game. My attempts to run away from a randomly spawning dragon in Skyrim led me to aggroing a troll, a sabre cat, and ultimately bumping into a patrol of Imperial legionnaires fighting a group of bandits. At this point of the game each of the antagonists found someone or something to fight other than me, and I found myself standing in the middle of a large melee, sword in hand with no enemy to fight. Each of these AI elements have their own pre-determined responses and behavioural patterns, but the addition of the player is variable which can lead to some unforeseen results. Skyrim is not a sandbox – the quests themselves still belong to the linear/branched school of game design – but the ability to choose what order to complete these quests, as well as the independent elements moving within the game bumping and interacting with each other gives it an organic and sandbox feel. The fact that the NPCs had their own day/night schedules, had limited scripts to interact with each other, and moved around dynamically added greatly to the illusion of a living, breathing virtual world. What gave the world weight in Skyrim was the amount of details which first appear extraneous, but actually comprise interactive elements which add further layers to the world. Watching a table adorned by various drinks, foodstuffs and cutlery get scattered during a melee is its own reward, as is the search for that one item that got lost during the scuffle. What other game made you pull away dead bodies and sort through fallen bottles and plates in order to find the quest item you needed? Add to that the player's ability to steal from, murder, and even marry non-essential NPCs, and it is no wonder why this game has been hailed as a triumph of player agency and has gone on to sell over 20 million copies world wide. And while the AI utilised in Skyrim is still quite primitive and predictable, there is no reason why these independent AI elements won't become much more sophisticated in the future, leading to some amazing and unforeseen emergent content.

PvP as a Driver of Organic Storytelling

For someone of my background (I am an unapologetic PvPer), it seems like such an MMO is doing things the hard way. Why go to all the trouble of creating what amounts to being a pale simulacrum of human agency (i.e. NPCs mimicking human behaviour in an MMO) when you can just use the real thing? Limit the amount of resources in a game, and watch the players emulate their own version of world history when they fight and squabble for them. This is exactly what happens in EVE and Darkfall. Meaningful PvP is defined as player combat which has a significant effect upon the persistent world which it inhabits. The degree in which PvP can be considered meaningful is proportional to the effect the player's actions have on the persistent world it is rooted in. In other words, how much the player's actions can shape the world determines how “meaningful” it is. I like “meaningful” world PvP because the simple factor of allowing the players to re-shape the world by their actions creates organic, complex and interesting content. It gives rise to player associations, meta-game politics, strategic considerations and game playing possibilities which are not possible in “balanced” PvP settings. The entire history of humankind is empirical evidence of how conflict drives scientific innovation as well as the development of social, political and economic institutions. Conflict also drives the production of literary content, as is evidenced by the vast tracts of prose, poetry, books, TV and films made about war. Similarly, I believe that meaningful world PvP can create lots of interesting player-driven narratives with the added bonus that no one is actually hurt (except for a few bruised egos here and there) and there are no casualties.

EVE is the gold standard by which all world PvP games must measure themselves against. In EVE players are free to create their own factions and coalitions – they can build their own structures – they continually reshape the map of New Eden with their battles over sovereignty. The world PvP in Darkfallalso falls in this category. Open world PvP in WoW, by contrast, is meaningless because regardless of whatever the players do, the world of Azeroth remains largely changeless and immutable. The world PvP in TESO straddles a middle ground between these extremes, as does its antecedent, Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC), by artificially dividing the player base into three factions but nonetheless allowing the factions to shape the persistent world to a greater or lesser degree. As someone who got his PvP legs in the meaningless open world PvP of WoW, the PvP system on offer in TESO is a real breath of fresh air. Cyrodiil is instanced, yes. But if the word instanced brings up images of dungeons, raids and battle grounds then the word does not do Cyrodiil justice. Cyrodiil is instanced in the same way whole servers in Dark Age of Camelot are instanced. Cyrodiil is instanced in the same way that the realm versus realm in Guild Wars 2 is instanced. Cyrodiil is an instance, but it is a massive, and more importantly, a persistent instance, rife with possibilities. It is a canvas upon which player action on a large scale shapes the landscape of the world. Keeps can be captured by siege actions, Elder Scrolls stolen, bridges held, ambushes sprung and skirmishes aplenty fought on the peripheries of the major battles. It is a place where meaningful open world PvP can happen, and stories can be made, experienced and told.

Bottom-Up Storytelling Encourages Community

If complex stories are derived from the interaction of players and the world, then it follows that the players bear some responsibility for the narrative content of the world. The complex approach requires the player to engage the world (and other players) to some degree in order to create the interaction which produces the events that become the stories. If you are a passive type of person then perhaps such narratives will not be to your tastes, and you are better served by staying with more traditional modes of storytelling. People who like linear/branching narratives belong to the school of “tell me a story”, while people who like complex narratives subscribe to the maxim of “I want to be part of a story”. Complex narratives can be as varied in quality as linear/branching ones, and as a matter of fact they are usually banal, repetitive and depressingly predictable. The appeal of the sandbox lies in the potential, and the modicum of agency retained by the player in shaping these narratives. The most hypocritical approach I have found is embodied in players who laud the concepts of “sandbox” and “emergent content” but are unwilling to make the effort to network, socialise or otherwise interact with the people found within MMOs. If you want to be the centre of the story then these types of stories are not for you. None of these formats are inherently better than each other, and the format you like all comes down to personal preference. However, massive multi-player games are well-suited to take advantage of the complex mode of storytelling, and it seems like a waste to continue using formats which are better utilised in more traditional forms of media. This is not to say that linear/branching stories can't be done well in MMOs, or that complex storytelling is guaranteed to produce memorable content. It's all about selecting the right tool for the job, and the MMO format is an amazing tool for creating player-generated stories.

In the upcoming TESO game I will chronicle the fortunes of the Cyrodiil campaign I find myself in, regardless of whether my faction dominates or is dominated. I'm a big fan of historical narratives and emergent game play – TESO will allow me to indulge in both by giving me the chance to write pseudo-history while simultaneously taking part in it. One of my goals is to create a fictional documentary of the civil war in TESO along the same lines as Ken Burn's classic series on the American Civil War, complete with maps of the battles, the names of the major players and guilds, mock testimonials and the history of the player-Emperors during the Interregnum. I was a role-player back in the day, and I'm looking forward to immersing myself in the coming civil war with my friends and family. I have made the resolution that I will not consult any out of game guides for the duration of the first campaign of the game (the first three months). TESO will only be new once, and I'd hate to ruin it in a frenzied orgy of min-maxing. The first three months will give me enough time to get a feel for the lay of the land, the geography of Cyrodiil as well as the major players and guilds on my faction and my enemies. It's not WoW PvP, where all you need are your team mates, and the rest of the community is just competition. It's good old-fashioned factional PvP where numbers can tip the tide of battle, the people in your faction count, and social cohesion is an advantage. I haven't decided what faction I will be playing yet, since we're going to put it to a vote in a week or two (I'm going to be an Imperial) but I look forward to having a reason to get to know the people on my side, becoming part of a community again, and swapping some war stories.

TESO has now been out for over a month, and I thought this would be an opportune time for me to add my own personal thoughts to the pool of opinions wallowing around on the Internet. My avatar is now Veteran Rank 1 (level 50), I have completed the main quest and spent more than 20+ hours in Cyrodiil. I have devoted enough time to the game to give it a fair shake. Prior to release I adopted a cheerfully optimistic view of TESO, disregarding a number of blogs and early reviews as being hasty, based on limited play time and beta experiences only. TESO also had to battle against the move away from the theme park zeitgeist, which meant that they were releasing into a critical environment which was growing hostile to this paradigm of MMO design (at least in the world of blogging). None of this deterred me in the least – for me the open world PvP of Cyrodiil was the clincher would ensure that I would at least try the game. I'd actually unsubscribed from WoW to give myself more time to play TESO. I've sampled other MMOs in the past (EVE, Warhammer Online, Rift, The Secret World and SWTOR), but this is the first time I have actually unsubscribed from WoW in order to play another MMO. Now a month onwards, it is time to see whether my optimism was warranted, or whether I was just being wilfully naïve.

Trapped in the clutches of Molag Bal, can our heroine prevail? Pfft, of course she can.

THE GOOD

The Best Single Player PvE MMO Ever

TESO is the best iteration of the single player MMO to date, which is a back-handed compliment of sorts, given that one of the most pervasive criticisms of recent MMOs is their emphasis on soloing and convenience at the expense of social interaction and true multiplayer gameplay. If you like theme park single player MMOs however, TESO sports the best realised implementation of this paradigm to date. So much so, in fact, that it almost seems to discourage grouping at times. The main quest, the Fighters Guild and the Mages Guild quest lines can only be done on your lonesome, and phasing frequently renders group members invisible to each other. There have been a few instances in where I have tried to render assistance to someone but was unable to help them because the mob in question was invisible to me or the other player was in an instanced space inaccessible to me. Taken as a single player game, however, TESO has high enough production values to stand on its own two feet, which makes questing interesting and engaging. Graphics, sound, music, ambience and voice acting are reminiscent of single player RPG titles. The game itself is breathtakingly beautiful. It puts many single player games to shame, and I have many “Oooo, look at that” moments where I simply stop and stare. In gameplay terms, I actually prefer the solo play in TESO to The Witcher, which I had begun prior to launch as a time filler – I find the combat, the crafting, the questing and the environments all superior to the single player title. I'd also rate TESO over Dragon Age 2, but place it well behind Dragon Age 1. TESO is very reminiscent of Dragon Age in terms of lore – the separation of worlds (the Fade in Dragon Age, and Oblivion in TESO) and the theme of mortals living in a world constantly meddled with by terrifying supernatural beings (the Daedric Princes and their ilk) are very similar.

Wow. This game is preeeetty.

The fact that I am comparing TESO to single player titles at all is a testament to the quality of its solo gameplay. It is the best single player MMO so far, surpassing the attempts by SWTOR to establish the “fourth pillar” of story within MMOs, and its approach to storytelling encompasses the use of extraneous details which add depth. You can zerg through the quests in a single-minded A to B fashion, or you can take a more lackadaisical approach by reading journals, letters, and exploring optional side quests which add further layers to the story. Furthermore, it is a nice touch to see NPCs you have interacted with appear in other zones, and they remember you based on the decisions you have taken. Regardless of the merits of its single player gameplay, if theme parks represents the ultimate evil of MMO design for you then TESO has nothing new to offer. If theme parks still divert and amuse, however, you will find that TESO has some of the best rides around.

Customised for Small Group Play

Despite its insistence on forcing the player on some solo paths, TESO on the whole is very friendly to small group play. There are public dungeons, world bosses and dark anchors to encourage grouping, and dungeons are tuned for four players. Travel to each other is fast and easy, and phasing issues can be sidestepped by keeping in careful step with each other. Zenimax are also planning to directly address the phasing issue in their upcoming patch to allow party members to “see” across different phases. The planned Adventure Zone of Craglorn is designed for four people, as are Arenas, which will be TESO's four person version of 12 person Trials. All in all TESO is a good fit for my regular gaming group, which consists of 5-6 people at most.

Meaningful Crafting

Crafting is engaging and meaningful. Crafted gear is supposedly the best gear in the game, which means there is ample motivation to spend time developing it.

Action Based, Non GCD Combat

Combat is fast and dynamic. Some commentators have argued that it has no weight, and I find that this is not true at all. My tank's charges hit home with force, the controls are responsive (I click, it happens), my shield bashes are suitably meaty, and collision detection in PvE puts a wrinkle in combat which I'm not used to. Sometimes you want to charge that healer in the back and you just can't, because his buddies are blocking your way. Non-GCD based combat also took some time getting used to as well, and I find that you can actually weave in your abilities between your weapon swings to increase your dps. My fingers are still learning to keep a beat with my light attacks, while interspersing abilities between the gaps. I did miss the floating numbers in the UI, which I artificially added by downloading the Foundry Tactical Combat add-on. TESO is more FPS than WoW, but that's not a bad thing for me personally. For me WoW has the best and most responsive GCD based combat, and Warhammer, Rift and SWTOR all suffered because they were pale imitations of WoW's e-sport tested system. For TESO to go down a different action-orientated route sets it apart from WoW, and makes it its own game, although I could see why this would be a turn-off for some.

Faction Based PvP

I find PvP in TESO to be fun and engaging WHEN IT WORKS. It's a paradigm shift from WoW and requires a different approach to meta-gaming, grouping and playstyle, but once I made the leap in my mind I was hooked. Unfortunately it is spoiled greatly by client instability on my Mac platform, which I will go into further detail below. TESO PvP and its meta requires its own post in the future, but for now I will just say that I am a fan of the old-fashioned factional PvP implemented in this game, which is unashamedly derivative of the realm versus realm model made famous by Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC). If the single-player PvE experience is resolutely theme park in its approach, then its world PvP is akin to a watered-down version of Darkfall and EVE, meaning that is more sandbox and player orientated, but without the hefty death penalties and losses associated with these other titles. The landscape of Cyrodiil is completely player-driven and constantly shifting, and it is interesting to see the emergence of the meta-game in its embryonic stages. I am in the Wabbajack campaign, and while it was dominated early by the Daggerfall Covenant (DC), meta-gaming developments have ensured that both the Ebonheart Pact (EP) and the Aldmeri Dominion (AD) are now major forces to be reckoned with. EP took the lead sometime last week thanks to the migration of a few large guilds, followed by a massive influx of rank and file EP who appeared to be influenced by a large call to arms on the Zenimax forums. AD, on the other hand, seem to have the support of a few V10 guilds who occasionally guest in from their AD dominated campaign on Auriel's Bow and sow carnage wherever they go. This is when the game becomes more than just shooting or stabbing random strangers in the wilderness for me. Once personalities begin to emerge from the background and bonds begin to form between once-wary guild members, the seeds of a healthy and thriving PvP community are sown. People are starting to know the name of the Emperors and the leaders of the more prominent guilds, and as more and more people hit 50 and join the war the player base is starting to collectively weave the story of Cyrodiil. I've been out on a few roams (to use EVE parlance) with the guilds I 've joined, and the mandatory sizing-up period is slowly giving way to familiarity, camaraderie and team work. Some commentators have cited the lack of community as a reason for quitting TESO, and I had to laugh at this. I guess they were expecting a fully formed community, complete with heroes, villains, friends, enemies and notable personalities, in the first month of the game. I think it is grossly hypocritical for commentators to attack the lack of community in MMOs but at the same time fail to make any effort to engage, build or otherwise interact with fledgling communities within the game. Community is bottom-up - it is built by players, and the more time I spend in Cyrodiil the more I see a meta start to emerge, and it bodes well for open world PvP in this game.

Open world PvP in this game is dynamic, fast-paced and fun.

THE BAD

The things which I didn't like about TESO:

Average Soundtrack

The soundtrack is average, but to be fair, it is competing with Jeremy Soule's amazing Morrowind theme, as well as the rousing Dovakhin score that came with Skyrim. There are moments when I hear that familiar refrain in pieces of music, but overall there is nothing memorable here for my own tastes.

Inventory Management

Inventory management is a bit of a nightmare in TESO. You will need to implement a system to sort out your stuff, or otherwise you will end up throwing away or vendoring crafting materials which might prove valuable later on. I ended up creating six bank alts to manage inventory bloat, but I still have to devote a good amount of time sorting my gear instead of questing or PvPing.

Guild Store UI

I support Zenimax's decision not to implement a global Auction House, but I find their guild auction house UI somewhat clunky. When you sell something in TESO the gold just arrives in your mail without a notification as to what item had just been sold. Seems like a small oversight, but it adds more work for the player, as I have to check my listings in order to work out what I have sold. The fact that you can also join five guilds is a good thing, but the fact that you have to individually search each guild's auction house is a pain in the ass. I can understand why selling has to be done on a per guild basis, but if you were buying would it not be a good quality of life change to consolidate purchases under one search engine? That way if you bought something the relevant guild and guildie still got the gold, but it would save each individual player the time they spend loading and searching each guild's separate auction house. Just a small quibble.

THE UGLY

As you can see, I am struggling to list anything which I think is really bad about TESO, and overall I think the core game is something I enjoy playing. Unfortunately, there are fundamental issues which go beyond the game itself, and they are all basically rooted in the fact that the game wasn't ready for release in April, especially on the Mac client.

Bugs

The bugs. For God's sake, the bugs. Some of them have been addressed, but the number of bugs I have personally encountered on my playthrough to Veteran Rank 1 (level 50) is quite significant. There have been a number of issues with the voice acting in TESO, ranging from NPCs that change voices, speak in German, or don't speak all. I've personally experienced about 15-20 of these instances in my playthrough to 50. I've also encountered NPCs in strange poses. These are relatively infrequent (I experienced less than 4-5 of these) but the most alarming was when King Emeric spoke to me with his head tilted back in a neck breaking Exorcist-style pose. This was repeated when I spoke to another NPC called Stibbons, and the screenshot is included below.

Yeah, OK, what's up with this?

The more jarring bugs have to do with broken quests which stop progression. There are actually several of these, and I estimate that I have encountered at least ten quests which I couldn't complete due to bugs. Luckily the nature of TESO is such that you could just skip the quest and do something else. There are soooo many bugs in this game that when something doesn't work or isn't clearly obvious I almost immediately assume that it is a bug. Broken quests I can cite off the top of my head include the assassins in Daggerfall, the non-dropping essences in Bethnik, the non-responsive bonfire in Pariah Abbey in Stormhaven, and the non-existent sailors in Al'akir (which meant you had to spec into Intimidating Presence to finish the quest). Most of these have been fixed now, but there are still broken quests here and there especially in the later zones. At the moment I am in Coldharbour where I have killed the world boss at the Daedroth's Larder three times, and still have not been awarded credit for it. There's also a quest just outside of Wayrest which requires you to break open droughr (?) cocoons with your fists. The funny thing is that once you break open a cocoon your avatar keeps swinging away with his fists, so you end up doing a Rocky impression as you roam the world shadow boxing at all and sundry. This is a more extreme version of another common bug I encountered, in which my toon would sometimes get stuck in a combat pose and roam the world with her blade raised in a threatening manner at everyone she met.

Maintenance

There have been a lots of maintenance periods, so much so that TESO has given early subscribers five extra days of game time as acknowledgement of the disruption. Maintenance on the megaserver used to occur during Tuesday and Friday morning US time, which translated to peak Tuesday and Friday Oceanic time. Furthermore, any additional maintenance (of which there has been many) were scheduled during the early hours of American time, which again, left many Australian, New Zealander and Pacific players with nothing to do in their evenings. You can imagine how this went over on the Oceanic crowd, who have begun dubbing the game “Elder Scrolls Offline” (at least in the Oceanic guilds I am in). To Zenimax's credit, they have moved their maintenance times to Monday and Thursday mornings, which means Oceanic players can now enjoy TESO on Friday nights. So despite the appalling state of the game, the developers are apparently listening. They're just moving at the speed of constipated tortoises.

Gold Sellers

Gold spammers. ZOMG. I don't know how many gold spammers I reported in the first two weeks of release, but it would have almost been close to 100. I don't know if Zenimax was ready for the scale in which gold sellers would infiltrate their game, but they descended on TESO like a pack of vultures, spamming zone chat, creating pseudo guilds and issuing ginvites, sending whispers and writing personal mail to players. It was blitzkrieg assault of unprecedented proportions, at least in my experience. There were packs of bots running around everywhere, with names like “adsdsdfd” and “sdfette” mindlessly farming mobs and materials in all the zones, and especially inside the public dungeons where they would wait for bosses to respawn before descending upon them like ravenous zombies in search of living flesh. Zenimax's countermeasures seem to be working, as the frequency of spam on all levels has noticeably dropped since those initial weeks. The scale of the assault was such that Zenimax stated that they spent almost 80% of their customer service time fighting bots, and they had to resort to arming Gamemasters and sending them into the world to ban bots on the spot. Wildstar developer's should take note, and have their own anti-gold seller measures ready, because if gold spammers hit Wildstar the same way they hit TESO they will be in for a similar experience.

Vampires

Vampires. Another running joke is the phrase “Elder Vampires Online”, because of the popularity and the dominance of vampires in PvP at the moment. Vampire were hit with a nerf bat in patch 1.07, but up to that point there were packs of vampires running around Cyrodiil spamming the Batswarm ability and wiping out groups. The most vicious combo were Dragon Knight vampires who would charge into the middle of enemy groups, spam Dragon Claw to root the group into place, drop their banner to mitigate their damage taken, then spam Bat Swarm until everyone died. The current meta employed by “successful” guilds appears to be the use of numerous DK suicide bombers spamming roots and AOE supported by healers behind. AOE is grossly overpowered in TESO, and I support Zenimax's decision to limit the number of targets affected to six (that's plenty enough to keep the current meta viable). When the pinnacle of your PvP gameplay becomes running mindlessly into a crowd and spamming one ability then it's time for a change in mechanics. I have to say that I don't understand the argument used by some people in the Tamriel Foundry which states that spamming AOE equals skill, especially coming from a Rated BG background where single target focus and coordination were the hallmarks of a successful team.

Glitches

My main is a Nightblade, and her passive abilities sometimes don't work for some reason. I can't nail down when and where this occurs, but sometimes I look at my character screen and my crit chance, which is nominally at around 30% due to my passives, drops back to 0% on occasion. I don't know if this is a display issue or whether it actually reflects my passives not working, but who the hell knows, at this point anything is possible. I hear other Nightblades bitching bitterly about this in zone chat in Cyrodiil, so I know I am not alone in this.

Another glitch occurs when I enter and leave Cyrodiil. When in combat and looking at your menus the edges of the screen flash red to warn you that your avatar is in danger. Unfortunately after leaving Cyrodiil the edges of the screen randomly flash red for no reason, regardless of whether or not you are in combat. It is remedied by logging out and logging back in, but it is becoming a bit of a joke how relogging and reloading one's UI has become a necessary element of questing in TESO. Quest not working? Relog. Mobs not dropping loot? Relog. Can't see an NPC? Relog. Passives not working? Relog. Animations getting stuck? Relog. They should add a relog button in the abilities bar, so you can weave it in as part of your rotation while you play the game.

So, I logged in, fell through the world, landed above it, and died. Awesome.

These are by no means the only glitches I have encountered in this game. There is also the falling through the world glitch, where you log in and promptly fall through the world and die (see above). This has only happened to me twice, but comments in zone chat tell me that I'm not alone in experiencing this unique form of avatar death. There is the “stuck on the steps” glitch in Cyrodiil, where horses inexplicably hit an unseen barrier while running up the steps. Move your horse off the steps onto the hill itself and suddenly the wall disappears. I have a shield in my inventory which doesn't know what it looks like (see below) and I also have a weapon with an incomplete description on its tool tip (again, see below).

Not game breaking, not even that much of a big deal really, but if only these were the only problems. Alas, they are just the tip of the iceberg.

There are also some connectivity issues in Cyrodiil where adding party members leads to temporary lag spikes and even disconnects within the whole party or raid. Leaving a raid is also fraught with danger, because you might never be able to rejoin it again (you become stuck in a loading screen). This was the maddening fate of several of our raid members last Saturday when they tried to swap toons during a guild PvP session. These poor bastards ended up having to stay outside the raid in order to play, although they were still able to communicate via Teamspeak. Taken individually these glitches are just a minor annoyance – when taken as a whole it reflects poorly on the state of the game because there are so many of them.

Crashes

Crashes. Especially on the Mac client. Rykester and I both play on Macs and we have the same issue in that we basically cannot play PvP consistently because the Mac client crashes every 10-15 minutes in Cyrodiil. This is a known issue with a thread devoted to it – someone much more clever than I has pinpointed it as a “memory leak” problem, and given us poor Mac users a work around of sorts which requires us to restart the game once our virtual memory starts approaching the “crash” threshold. Luckily for TESO I was more interested in levelling and taking my time in the game, because otherwise this would be game-breaking for me. I am now VR1, and my client still crashes, which means this is now a serious problem for TESO. I started writing a diary of the Wabbajack campaign early in April, and instead of producing a player-driven account of the war in Cyrodiil what Zenimax might get is a piece entitled “The History of Bugs in TESO”, “The Buggiest MMO of All Time” or “How I Didn't PvP in TESO Because I Have a Mac.” My PvP sessions basically consist of me logging into Cyrodiil, setting a timer for 10 minutes, then logging out and logging back in to reset my virtual memory. If I don't do this the game cheerfully reminds me by crashing soon afterwards. This can be ameliorated by not grouping at all, which is just pouring salt into the wound. Go into Cyrodiil by yourself, don't group with anyone, and the crash threshold increases dramatically to about 30 minutes to an hour. Of course you can't see where your team mates are, you don't engage in any kind of meaningful team play, nor do you share in the kills the group scores while they are together. I told you TESO encouraged solo play, didn't I?

FINAL THOUGHTS

My sister unsubbed from TESO in a fit of disgust two weeks ago after a frustrating Sunday play session. We played PvP with our usual MMO foursome, and we started in Cyrodiil with high hopes – a patch had just been implemented, and perhaps the long awaited for Mac fix was in. They were soon dashed when my Mac started doing its crashing routine every 10-15 minutes. This was compounded by my inability to log back into my main character in Cyrodiil (the “stuck in loading screen” issue), but rather than ruin the fun for everyone I told them just to PvP without me while I pottered around on an alt. Once I was able to log back into my main we decided just to do some dungeons, but then we hit the “no experience” and “no loot” bug for my sister (she was level 39 in Blackheart Cove, which is level 40-43). No problem, we thought – she simply reloaded her game, and amazingly, the mobs started dropping loot for her. We went into Blackheart Cove with a 47, a 43, a 39 and a 34, so we were slightly underpowered. We persevered, however, finally getting to the last boss and downing him after several wipes. The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was that neither my sister or her husband were given credit, loot or the achievement for the kill, while Rykester and I were. She logged off and unsubbed that very instant. She has since resumed her subscription, but made it categorically plain that she was only doing it to hang out with our crew.

My regular gaming crew. On the mandolin is my sister, Sally Mander. My Redguard Nightblade is on the drums, Rykester is on the lute, and dancing and singing is Taranakii.

If you haven't bought TESO yet, I would actually recommend it with the following caveat. Buy it in a few month's time, when all these issues have been resolved. This game was not ready for release, and Sunday was the first day I changed from being a “true believer” to a “burned consumer.” There are many things I like about TESO – it's a pity that there are so many jarring issues which ruin the experience for everyone. I was such a big fan of the TESO IP and the promise of their open world PvP that I was quite willing to tolerate literally a litany of bugs, and it took the poor opinion of my sibling to shake me out of this blinkered infatuation with the title. Once I started listing what issues I encountered in this game the flood gates literally opened, and I'm seeing the game for what it is instead of what I was hoping it would be.

72, which is less than the 80 I predicted prior to release.

In the first post of this series I predicted that TESO would score over 80 on the Metacritic scale. As of 17 May 2014 TESO currently hovers at a score of 72, which makes my first prediction well short of the mark. My other predictions still stand however, but my confidence in them has been shaken somewhat given my own experiences. Free-to-play is now a definite possibility, but I'll stand by my prediction that this game will still be sub based by April next year. The one good thing going for TESO is that Zenimax is responding and patching as often as they can. I've been impressed by their responsiveness – they added collision detection based on player feedback in the beta, actual GMs are now in the game patrolling for bots and gold farmers, and they moved maintenance from Friday to Thursday to accommodate disgruntled Oceanic players. Unfortunately, they're like a bunch of oarsmen frantically bailing out a sinking boat with numerous holes in it, and the question becomes whether they'll be able to salvage the ship before the passengers decide its time to cut their losses and swim for other lifeboats. Wildstar is less than two weeks away, and this is a critical time for a significant number of subscribers who might be on the fence about both games.

In further news Zenimax has delayed the release of the console version of the game for six months, moving it from June to sometime in December. This comes as no surprise at all, given the extremely rough state of the game as it stands at this point. Despite my disappointment at the state of the game I am still foolishly optimistic that all these issues will eventually be ironed out, and the game can live up to the potential I saw in it. If my sister unsubs again, however, our foursome will join her. Our team of players has always migrated together from MMO to MMO, and if one is out, we are all out. Zenimax doesn't have to impress me, because I'm an idiotic sucker who just likes the idea of playing a PvP MMO in the Elder Scrolls universe. TESO has to impress the more rational people out there who like getting what they paid for, and who have become accustomed to the level of polish Blizzard has displayed as a standard in all of their games. A number of people have told me that WoW was equally buggy at launch, but since I wasn't around for that, I can only compare my experiences with the launches of Warhammer Online, Rift, SWTOR and The Secret World, for which I was present. I can say categorically that while these other titles had their own issues at launch, none have had as many and as game-breakingly damaging as TESO has had. I still can't play PvP consistently for fuck's sake, which is the main reason why I bought the game. Yet, I'm still here, I'm still foolishly hoping, and who knows, maybe my faith will be vindicated further down the track. Hopefully there will still be players around when that happens.

I love WoW ladder PvP. In my eyes it is a fast paced game of skill and teamwork which requires a deep knowledge of the meta in order to succeed. To anyone who complains that WoW is too easy I would give them the following challenge – go forth and break 2k in any of the formats, whether that be 2s, 3s, 5s or Rated BGs. This is something I have never been able to do despite literally years of trying, and while I have come close, this milestone has always eluded me. So if you think the game is too easy and you want a challenge in WoW, give ladder play a shot. I'll wager you will get all the challenge you want and more.

There are of course players who have already done this, and perhaps they are now all sitting around complaining that the game offers no challenge to them. To these people I would say that the beauty of ladder play is that you can always go higher! If you have 2k then I'd say go for Duelist (top 3%) or even Gladiator (top 0.5%). The ladder is region wide now, so there are no excuses. Pit yourself against the very best. As for the top dogs on top of the ladder, they have the opportunity to become e-sports stars, earning real world money on the tournament circuit. They can become pro-gamers like Starcraft 2 stars SoS, Polk and Jaedong, and travel to international tournaments in Brazil, China, Germany, Poland and the US. How cool would that be?

Oh wait. Can they?

The purpose of that over-long preamble is to set the stage for the theme of this article, which is the rise and “fall” of WoW as an e-sport. I will cover the history of WoW in e-sports, speculate on the reasons of its demise, and make some predictions as to the future of this format. The idea for this article germinated sometime during the month of March while I was watching the Yaspresents and Armageddon WoW Arena tournaments on Twitch. Armageddon was held on the same weekend of March (15-16) as the finals of Intel Extreme Masters for League of Legends and Starcraft 2, and I couldn't help but compare the teeming crowds (see the picture below) at the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) with the small production on offer at Armageddon. I dimly recalled the team of Evil Geniuses standing triumphant at the very same Extreme Masters event a few years ago, and started wondering why Arena was no longer represented at these premiere e-sports events.

A Brief (and Dodgy) History of WoW Arena as an E-sport

Football game? Nope, it's the crowd at the Starcraft 2 Intel Extreme Masters in Poland on the weekend of 15-16 March.

It's pretty awe-inspiring to see how far e-sports has come over the years. The players earn more, the shows are becoming slicker and more professional, and the crowds are starting to look like...well, sports crowds! Who would have thought that one day the best teams in the world would walk away with purses in excess of $1,000,000 for first place? Yet that is exactly what happens at the very top tier of the most popular PvP games out there such as Defence of the Ancients 2 and League of Legends. Tournament prize money is also just the tip of the iceberg. Nowadays there are professional teams, salaried players, corporate sponsorships and broadcasting, all of which are beginning to rival, and in some ways eclipse, traditional sports. DOTA 2's annual tournament offers a prize pool of $6 million dollars, with the winning team taking home a staggering $3,000,000. That amount is mind-boggling, and rivals anything on offer from professional sports. There are quite a number of organisations hosting e-sports leagues and tournaments, but my intention in this article is to focus primarily on the Electronic Sports League (ESL) based out of Germany, the Korean E-Sports Association (KeSPA) in South Korea which sponsored the now-defunct World Cyber Games (WCG), and Major League Gaming (MLG) based in the US. These three organisations were chiefly responsible for supporting WoW Arena during its run as an e-sport in 2008-2011.

The very first Arena season began in February 2007. It was introduced in the first WoW expansion of The Burning Crusade, and I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. Speaking for myself personally I have to say that the only reason why I remained a WoW subscriber was because of ladder PvP, despite my own limitations as a player. Blizzard was able to secure seven more years from me as a subscriber based on the presence of their ladder PvP system. It came at a price, however, and that came in the internal schism between PvE and PvP which continues to this day. Balance, class design, population, playstyle and gear were all impacted in a way which radically changed the game forever.

Ladder PvP quickly carved out a large demographic of its own, effectively creating a game within a game. There now exists a large and vocal demographic in WoW which only plays the game for the PvP element, constituting enough of the subscriber base that Blizzard has continued to cater to them over the past seven years. It wasn't long before the big organisers took notice. The golden age of WoW Arena as an e-sport was between 2008 and 2010. During this period ESL, MLG and WCG supported the Arena format and made it part of their regular circuit. This period also coincided with the peak of WoW's popularity. In October 2010 during Wrath of the Lich King WoW peaked at over 12 million subscribers world-wide, a figure which will surely never be surpassed again.

Evil Geniuses, at the last ever ESL tournament to host WoW Arena in Hanover, Germany in March 2010.

Arena had a three year run at the top, but sadly it wasn't destined to last forever. Both ESL and MLG dropped WoW in 2010. The last ESL tournament featuring WoW was the World Championships held in Hanover, Germany in March 2010, and this is actually the tournament that I remembered when I first started thinking about this article. MLG soon followed suit by dropping WoW from their National Championships in Dallas in November 2010. The last MLG event featuring WoW was in October 2010. WoW's last hurrah on the pro-circuit was in the World Cyber Games in 2011, held in Busan, South Korea. Since that time WoW has been restricted to Blizzard's own Blizzcon tournaments, which to be fair, are nothing to be sneezed at. The 2012 Battlenet World Championship was a particularly grand production in Shanghai China, on par with many of the bigger events hosted recently, complete with sizeable prize pools, an opening ceremony, and a march of the athletes (erm, players) walking out with their national flags. While the scale of Blizzcon continues to rival any events held by third party organisers, it is not the same as being recognised and legitimised by established international cross-gaming leagues such as ESL, MLG and WCG. WCG itself folded earlier this year, so perhaps even the legitimacy conferred by these organisations are a paper distinction at best. There is a big difference to the state of WoW now, however, and to its exalted position in 2008-2010 where everyone wanted to play it, broadcast it, watch it, hold tournaments for it, and pay the top players good money for doing well at it.

Limitations of WoW as a Spectator E-Sport

In my opinion. WoW Arena had a number of fundamental limitations which prevented it from establishing itself as a staple of e-sport:

I. Bad Spectator Client

The biggest obstacle in my mind is that the Blizzard viewing client is poorly designed. The standard client utilises a player point of view (PoV), which continually changes between players as the game progresses. It would have been better served by a top down view or a floating camera above and separate from the players, such as the one utilised by the Yaspresents tournament. Such a client would have created a stable frame of reference for spectators. As it stands, the first battle spectators have to fight is to understand the spectator client itself. The constant jumps between PoV to PoV is tremendously confusing. Movement and positioning are crucial elements of Arena play - one of the biggest defences a healer has against offensive CCs is positional play in the use of LoS obstacles or range management (i.e. moving away from Cyclone attempts or short range Blinds). Similarly, DPS have to have good situational awareness in order to avoid overextending into bad positions, or to swap onto enemy targets who are vulnerable. One of the things that separates good DPS from great DPS is their ability to recognise when one of their team mates are in trouble, and “peeling” (i.e. using defensive CCs to buy them a few seconds, or swapping onto the enemy to relieve pressure) for them. Unfortunately, attempts to showcase this in a logical manner are scuppered by the horrendous spectator UI. How can anyone appreciate great positional play when we have no idea where the players are standing at any given moment because of the rapidly changing PoV? Having a static camera would quickly establish several paradigms of Arena play which are not immediately obvious with the current spectator client. People would see how healers are careful about not being too exposed; they would see how DPS are careful about not overextending, and how overextending is brutally punished; they would see how players move in to CC to set up kills; they would see the counter-moves by the healers to avoid being CCed; they would see when a team is in full aggressive kill mode, and when a team is playing super defensive; the list goes on.

Spectators will eventually be able to learn how to “see” these things with the current spectator UI, but this is a demand the game shouldn't impose on newcomers, especially if we want to grow our audience base. Conan O'Brien's attempts to commentate on tournament matches during Blizzcon 2013, while being derided by some, clearly illustrates the barrier this client imposes on potential spectators. While it was amusing to see O'Brien ham his way through the tournament, it should be obvious that the current client is a massive impediment to the growth of WoW as a spectator-friendly e-sport. The spectator client is not for the existing fans, because they will put up with whatever crap gets thrown at them because they like the game already. The client should be designed with newcomers and casual spectators in mind to showcase the game in a way that is easy to understand. By this criteria the UI used by Blizzard is an abysmal failure.

II. Obscure Decision Making

Decision making in SC2 is easy to understand. Base building in the first two to three minutes tells the spectators what build and army composition each player is going to utilise, and player skill on both the micro and the macro level are easily apparent. The slow ramp up time of SC2 gives the commentators time to explain the build, units and possible ramifications, and the top down view is intuitive enough that spectators who don't play the game can still follow the action. Decision-making in WoW Arena, by contrast, is much more obscure. Even if you know the game it is difficult to follow what is actually happening. WoW Arena is a death match. Coordinated burst, pressure and crowd control are used to force defensive cooldowns (CDs), and eventually land a kill. Viewed in this way WoW can be seen as a game of CD management, with the majority of kills being landed by the team which manages its CDs better. The problem with this game as a spectator sport is that the use of CDs is something that happens largely off-screen, and it happens in super-fast succession. It's not like a card game like Magic or Hearthstone where the ability being played is quite obvious (i.e. visually represented by the card played on the table). CDs have small visual cues and icons associated with them (i.e. players who are bursting turn red, or a recipient of the monk's Life Cocoon becomes surrounded by a massive green bubble) but unless you are an experienced player who knows the meta-game quite well, these cues in of themselves won't mean anything. Further compounding this is the fact that CDs are used quickly and in rapid-fire succession, which makes it even more difficult to follow what is happening if you are a newcomer to the game. Even experienced commentators like Azael can be taken by surprise by sudden kills which seemingly come out of nowhere. Experienced players can see kill opportunities or know when their team is on the back foot, but the ability to read the play takes hundreds of games to develop. I subscribe to the Skill Capped website in order to watch videos of high level matches being broken down and dissected by top players. It is not uncommon for the commentator to spend 10-15 minutes explaining their decision-making in a particular match and have the actual match play out over 30 seconds when played in real-time.

Unlike Magic the Gathering, the use of CDs in Arena is hard to follow, happens largely behind the scenes. and occurs in super-fast succession.

Healing is also an integral part of Arena, but the problem with this mechanic as a spectator is that it is largely invisible. Monks are the most spectator-friendly of healing classes, because their channelled heals create a clear graphical link between the healer and the recipient. Other classes have no such mechanic, which further adds to the enigma of Arena to the untrained eye. People can watch one match and see two melee train a target to no discernible effect. These people could watch a similar game and watch two melee absolutely flatten the same target. The difference between the two examples could be attributed to five factors - i) whether or not the melee were using burst CDs; ii) whether or not the target was using defensive CDs; or iii) whether or not the healer was free casting or in CC; iv) whether or not the healer was using healing CDs to bolster their healing effectiveness; and v) whether or not the healer was in LoS. All the factors which determine whether or not a kill is landed are largely invisible, or require a deep and specialised knowledge of the meta-game which newcomers are not privy to. The use of LoS is not immediately apparent because there is no graphical representation of the healer healing his/her target. Even spectators who are conversant with the use of LoS have a hard time determining the relative positions of the players because the spectator client jumps around from PoV to PoV. The gauge of effective healing is displayed primarily by the movement of the health bars, and the simple fact that the character doesn't fall down and die. This does not make for exciting viewing, and it also seems to make landing kills random when it is anything but. There is rapid-fire decision-making happening behind the scenes which differentiates the good and the great, but spectators are not privy to this.

III. Constantly Changing Meta

WoW Arena imposes a further demand on potential spectators based on its constantly changing meta. Unlike pure PvP games which can devote all their energies to balancing around player combat, WoW has to juggle between the conflicting demands of PvE and PvP. There is ample evidence that Blizzard found it extremely difficult to balance the PvE and PvP elements of the game, leading to the famous comment by Rob Pardo in 2009 in which he stated that Arena was the biggest mistake in the game's history. Add to this the pressure to innovate with each new expansion as well as the need to balance between nine, ten, and eventually eleven separate classes each with three specs apiece, and it's no wonder that balancing was a nightmarish task for Blizzard's PvP team. WoW is notorious for “flavour of the month” classes and compositions. The current MOP meta is dominated by wizard cleaves, meaning compositions composed primarily of spell casters supported by either resto druids or resto shamans. Looking at the team comps in the finals of the last three major Arena tournaments, a theme starts to emerge:

i) Blizzcon 2013 – MiR (frost mage/resto druid/shadow priest) vs. Skill Capped (affliction lock/resto druid/shadow priest);

ii) Yaspresents 2014 – Skill Capped (affliction lock/elemental shaman/resto druid) vs. Started from the Bottom (affliction lock/elemental shaman/resto druid);

iii) Armageddon 2014 – Skill Capped (affliction lock/elemental shaman/resto druid) vs. Three Amigos (affliction lock/frost mage/resto shaman).

Not a melee in sight, and if you're a paladin, monk or priest healer you are out of luck. More importantly however, the changing meta creates further demands on would-be spectators which limits the game's accessibility. Even if a spectator took the time to learn the meta, he/she could find that everything he/she knew was redundant three to four months later with the release of a new patch or expansion. To be fair, SC2 and LoL also have a constantly evolving meta, but the advantage that these games have is that they only have to balance for PvP, and their evolution is usually incremental in nature. WoW is a PvE MMO first and foremost, and the demands of the PvP base is not their first priority. Furthermore, changes to the WoW meta can be quite radical, leading to far-reaching changes to play style, composition and even viability.

IV. Competition and Alternatives

Competition from other titles presents the biggest barrier to the return of WoW Arena as an e-sport, and oddly enough, most of the competition will be coming from in-house. Blizzard recently just launched Hearthstone, and is planning to release their own multi-player online battle arena (MOBA) in the form of Heroes of the Storm. When you factor in Starcraftyou can see that Blizzard has three titles they can push as tournament games, with WoW Arena making up a fourth. It makes more sense for Blizzard to devote most of their resources to their newer titles rather than to allocate them onto an ageing 10 year old gaming format. MOBAs represent the current apex of e-sports at the moment, and while WoW Arena can be described as a type of MOBA, it is old, arcane, and competing with younger, sleeker and established titles such as DOTA 2 and LoL.

The End of WoW as an E-Sport

The question for me becomes not one of why WoW was dropped as an e-sport, but rather how it became an e-sports at all given all its disadvantages. How does a game which is hard to watch, difficult to understand and requires an up-to-date knowledge of a rapidly changing meta become an e-sports at all? For me, the fact that WoW Arena was an e-sport during the halcyon days of 2008-2010 appeared to be a historical fluke based on its amazing popularity at the time. WoW was at the peak of its popularity, having peaked at over 12 million subscribers world-wide, and the big organisers at ESL, MLG and WCG probably wanted to tap into this demographic. Blizzard already had an impeccable pedigree when it came to producing popular e-sports by 2008. Starcraft had become a global phenomenon, and the current MOBA craze which is enthralling millions of players around the world has its roots in Defence of the Ancients, which began its life as a Warcraft 3 mod. Perhaps ESL, MLG and WCG thought Blizzard was onto another e-sports winner in WoW Arena, and they acted as all sensible organisers would by jumping on the proverbial bandwagon.

Whether the game could establish itself at the highest levels was basically up to the game itself, as it certainly had its shot in the big leagues. In my opinion, the limitations of the game as a spectator sport meant that the game could not sustain itself at the highest level, and as WoW began to wane in popularity and DOTA and League of Legends began their own meteoric rise WoW was dropped from the circuit. It also has to be pointed out that while WoW had over 12 million players at its peak, not all of these players were PvPers. It is hard to know what percentage of the player base actively pushes rating on the ladder or are actually interested in WoW Arena as an e-sport, but apparently it wasn't enough for the decision-makers. ESL and MLG dropped WoW at the end of 2010, followed shortly by WCG in 2011.

In hindsight it appears to me that WoW Arena did not have the critical mass of players required to ensure its growth as a viable e-sport. Starcraft was adopted by Korea while DOTA became a massive hit in China, and the support of the gamers in these countries fuelled the growth of these respective games both domestically and on the international stage, which in turn made the amazing world-wide success of League of Legends possible. WoW Arena's best hope was to be adopted by North America and Europe the same way Korea took to Starcraft and China embraced DOTA, but for whatever reason, the game failed to capture the imagination of the e-sports viewing public during its run in 2008-2010.

The Blizzard Conspiracy

There is an alternative hypothesis as to the fall of WoW as an e-sport, and it is hinged on the premise that Blizzard itself pulled the plug. I mentioned Rob Pardo's quote about Arena being the single greatest mistake in WoW's history, and it is worth re-stating here:

“We really never designed WoW to be a competitive e-sports game... I don't think we ever foresaw how much tuning and tweaking we'd have to do to balanceit in that direction. Either I'd go back in time to before WoW ever shipped and change the rules to make the basic game more conductiveto being an e-sport, or if not, just say it doesn't make sense... It's tricky, now that we've gone down that road, because we have a passionate, large audience that enjoys it – the Arena, the e-sport– so we can't just chop off that head.”

It has to be stated that this was said in 2009 at the VERY height of WoW's popularity as an e-sport. Pardo realised that it was no longer possible to cut ladder PvP from WoW now that the genie had been let out of the bottle, but the same wasn't necessarily true for supporting the format on a tournament level. Perhaps they recognised all the issues Arena had internally, and rather than putting a flawed product out on the world stage or spending the resources to fix it, they decided to pull the game instead. Adding weight to this hypothesis is the fact that the Armageddon tournament in March 2014 was the FIRST Arena tournament since MLG in 2010 to be officially sanctioned by Blizzard. It is hard to understand why Blizzard would not sanction any tournaments for FOUR years, unless it was for the simple reason that they just didn't want to. Perhaps Blizzard got fed up with balancing the game for an international stage. Perhaps they didn't want to spend the resources on developing a spectator UI. Perhaps they asked for too much money from the organisers. Perhaps they wanted to spend their time and money on SC2, which was already a proven success. Whatever the reason is Blizzard remains silent about it. I have been unable to find official statements from either ESL or MLG as to why they decided to drop WoW, but there are a few clues scattered here and there on ageing forums. One theory proposed is that the ESL and MLG were waiting for Cataclysm to launch (December 2010) before they reinstated WoW back to the active roster. Another theory is that they were waiting for Blizzard to create a new spectator client. If either are actually the case then it is apparent that four years on and two expansions later, they are still waiting.

Fast-forward four years to the present and we suddenly see an about face from Blizzard. Brian Holinka (lead PvP designer) and Kim Phan (head of Blizzard's e-sports division) gave a very frank and illuminating interview at the Armageddon tournament (linked above) in March 2014 in which Holinka commented on the topic of playability versus “watchability” which lies at the heart of Arena. From the interview, Blizzard seems to be adopting a supportive but “wait and see” attitude – Holinka acknowledged the defects of the spectator client and identified it as the problem which most urgently needs fixing to make WoW Arena viable as a spectator e-sport. As to whether or not Blizzard will be actively pushing Arena, Phan made it clear that they are handing the ball to the community, and will react based on the level of support generated by the audience base. Kim Phan also stated on record that MLG has approached them with the proposal of reinstating WoW Arena once the new spectator client is introduced in Warlords of Draenor (WOD). This is great news for Arena fans, and if it pans out, it will be the start of the road back to e-sports recognition.

One has to ask, however, why Blizzard waited so long. It is hard to reconcile the theory that Blizzard pulled the plug on e-sports Arena at the end of 2010 with the supportive tone now espoused by the current team of Holinka/Phan in 2014. It seems slightly schizophrenic and self-destructive, but it has to be remembered that companies are not unified, monolithic entities – they are composed of people, people can have disagreements, and opinions can change over time. My own personal “tin foil” theory is that even at the height of its popularity in 2008-2010 an internal battle was taking place within Blizzard over the role, and even legitimacy, of ladder PvP within the greater game. The image that comes to mind is that of someone grabbing a tiger by the tail, and wondering how to let go. Blizzard introduced Arena, suddenly realised how much work it entailed and the problems it introduced, thought about dropping it, then watched in horror as it took on a life of its own and grew its own audience and became an e-sport supported by the big leagues. Realising that they couldn't just arbitrarily remove ladder PvP any more, they did the next best thing and pulled it from the tournament circuit in order to keep the various issues associated with Arena in-house and away from the e-sports limelight. It is one thing to be criticised by your own player base; it is another to be criticised by the entire gaming world when your game is held up to close scrutiny. The great tragedy of this ideological battle (for PvPers) is that by the time the dust settled and PvP became an accepted part of WoW's identity, the chance to establish the format on the world stage had been lost. Regardless of whatever steps Blizzard takes in WoD now, it would seem that they squandered a golden opportunity when they failed to introduce an accessible spectator client at the opening of Cataclysm.

Future Directions

Watching all the remaining die-hards on Twitch make earnest and passionate declarations to grow the community fills me with mixed feelings. I'm a big fan of WoW Arena, but I have serious doubts as to its ability to ever make it back to the big time. I still watch all the tournaments on Twitch TV, and keep track of who the top players are for each of the classes. Nonetheless I am quite pessimistic of WoW Arena's ability to make it back as a top tier e-sports outside of Blizzcon and community run tournaments for all the reasons enumerated above. There is hope in PvP-Live's continued support of the format, and in the proposed changes in Warlords of Draenor. The addition of a spectator-mode promises to make tournaments more accessible, but this is a feature that has been implemented almost four years too late. If this feature had been implemented in 2010 or earlier then one of the major impediments to WoW's success could have been circumvented. The period between 2008 and 2010 is not just WoW Arena's golden period. It also represents a missed chance to educate the public about the game. Perhaps Arena was never destined to stay at the top given the issues listed above, but there is a school of thought that says that there was a tremendous opportunity to establish the game and its meta at the top in the same way Starcraft had captured an audience. As it is the window of opportunity has closed, and it may never come again.

Arena already has a devoted community, and as long as Blizzard keeps hosting Blizzcon Arena will always have a large premier tournament in which the top players can showcase their skills. It cannot be underestimated how large Blizzcon is as an e-sports event – the prize pool on offer has been on par with the biggest events any of the other major organisers have offered, and Blizzard has adroitly positioned it as the apex of the World Championship Series of Starcraft 2. However, while Starcrafthas taken on a life of its own outside of Blizzard, WoW Arena seems destined to remain the province of a hardcore audience, and its eventual fate tied to the fortunes of the MMO and the parent company which spawned it. The ONLY major tournament hosting WoW Arena this year will be Blizzcon, while Starcraft 2 is played all year around and supported by both ESL and MLG with numerous tournaments boasting prize pools in excess of $100,000. By contrast both Yaspresents and Armageddon struggled to raise a $10k prize pool for their respective Arena tournaments. Whether or not the proposed changes in WoD as to the spectator client and the overhaul of class mechanics will revive the flagging fortunes of WoW Arena remains to be seen. As it stands 2014 is another write off for WoW Arena as a major e-sport. I can't help but feel some sympathy for the players who have worked their way to the top of the Arena ladder and experienced the highs of tournament play. While SC2, DOTA 2 and LoL players continue to be lauded and rewarded for their excellence in their chosen games, the top WoW Arena players can only look on in quiet envy. Their fate is akin to ageing prize-fighters reliving their prime, as the golden years of their sport fade further and further into the past.

I bought TESO on the promise of its open world PvP, but my attempts to engage it on an ongoing basis have been sabotaged by the instability of the Mac client, which crashes every 10-15 minutes in Cyrodiil. While this period has been extended somewhat by recent patches (it now crashes every 20-30 minutes) it has led me to focus on the PvE side of the game, which was enough to hold my interest until level 50 (VR1). I finally bit the bullet and partitioned my Mac, and installed TESO on the Windows side. I can finally PvP without crashing, and more importantly, I can PvP with groups in Cyrodiil instead of having to go solo ganking. I can finally dive into the campaign with both feet, without having to worry about compromising groups by random crashes in potentially decisive moments.

PvP Campaigns

There are 10 PvP campaigns in TESO for each region (North America and Europe), and 9 of them are 90 days in duration, with the last campaign lasting only two weeks, presumably as a sop to complaints on the official forums that campaigns were too long. The two week campaign (Celarus) was introduced with the 1.1.2 Craglorn patch in late May, and it actually replaced an existing 90 day campaign (Scourge). Zenimax intended to phase out Scourge over a period of time in order to allow the inhabitants to migrate to other campaigns, but in a monumental blunder typical of TESO's bug-infested release to date, they accidentally deleted the whole server with the release of 1.1.2 and replaced it with the two week campaign. Zenimax's apology is below:

"Those of you who participated in the Scourge campaign have likely noticed that it is no longer available following our deployment of Update 1.1.2 today. During the maintenance, we added a new campaign with a 2-week duration. In light of this new campaign, we intended to close Scourge—but not quite so soon. An error in our update process ended the campaign prematurely on the North American megaserver and before we could give you adequate warning."

To say that this is a /facepalm moment is a massive understatement, but I couldn't help but laugh. If you want to peruse the understandable anger this debacle wrought, just follow the link above to the official forums.

Fortunately for my gaming group, no such calamity has befallen us as of YET, but I'm not holding my breath. We are based in the North American Wabbajack campaign, and we play on the Daggerfall Covenant (DC) aka "the blueberries", which is the one of three factions available on TESO. The other factions are the Altmeri Dominion (AD) aka "the bees" and the Ebonheart Pact (EP) aka "the raspberries". I can say with a lot of confidence that it is one of the most active and most competitive campaigns in North America, with each faction having held the lead in the overall campaign score at one point or another. Each faction has also crowned its share of Emperors, and Wabbajack consistently has the highest population out of all the 90 day campaigns in North America. Here is a snapshot of the comparative populations of Cyrodiil on Saturday 7 June 2014 North American peak time:

Taken on 7 June 2014 1048 Japan Standard Time, which translates to 2148 Eastern Daylight Time. US East Coast Friday evening. Wabbajack is full, Bloodthorn is almost full, Auriel's Bow is dominated by AD, and the rest of the campaigns have low populations. The Altmeri Dominion are yellow, the Daggerfall Covenant is blue, and the Ebonheart Pact is red. Bees, blueberries and raspberries.

I have been tracking the populations of the campaigns via twice-a-day screenshots, and it appears to me that out of all the remaining 90 day campaigns the most active is Wabbajack, followed by Bloodthorn. The rest are much lower by comparison. Matt Firor stated that the maximum number of players allowed in Cyrodiil is about 1800, with each faction allowed to bring up to 600 players. Assuming this number is correct, we could say that one bar equals 1-300 players, two bars approximately 301-599, and a locked symbol denotes that the population is capped at approximately 600. This is pretty good, considering that the biggest battle ever fought in MMO history occurred in EVE Online in July 2013, where over 3000 to 4000 players fought a massive battle in 6VDT-H (with many more waiting in the wings to warp into the system). 1800 might be less than half that number, but at least TESO players are not playing in 10% time dilation. Well, most of the time anyway. Lots of players still complain about lag, but the TESO client on Windows has run beautifully for me for the vast majority of the time. This still doesn't let Zenimax off the hook for the unstable Mac client, though, which is a piece of crap by comparison.

The Early Emperors

As alluded to above, I have been religiously taking screenshots of the map, the scoreboard and the population at approximately 7 am and 7 pm Japan Standard Time (JST) everyday since 9 April 2014. This date coincides with the first day my gaming group entered Cyrodiil for the first time. Up to this point, from early access onwards AD had been dominating the campaign, with DC coming a close second and EP in last place.

The Wabbajack campaign score as of 9 April 2014, the very first time we entered Cyrodiil. Campaign scores are evaluated on an hourly basis, with 10 points being awarded per keep, 5 points per outpost, 1 point per resource (farm, lumber mill or mine) and 25 points per Elder Scroll held. The winning faction will be the one which has the most number of points by the time the campaign duration ends, which in this screenshot will be in 78 days.

Based purely on dumb luck we were able to take part in the crowning of the first ever DC Emperor. The first DC Wabbajack Emperor was Whispers to Ravens, and he was an Argonian Nightblade (NB) healer. It was a bit strange to have an Argonian become leader of a faction comprised primarily of Bretons, Orcs and Redguards, but since the disgraced leader of the Fighter's Guild in Tamriel was an Argonian named Sees All Colours, I was able to use the power of wishful thinking to believe that this was acceptable lore-wise. For me the early days of the campaign will always be associated with running with the Emperor in our midst. It was never hard to pick out Whispers – the golden armour and the big waggling reptilian tail made him stand out of the zerg.

All hail Whispers to Ravens, the first ever Wabbajack Emperor of the Daggerfall Covenant!

Any pretence of role-playing was destroyed by the ascension of the second DC Emperor named Johnny Hammersticks sometime during mid April. No amount of wishful thinking would make this name acceptable lore-wise, and worse, the name Johnny is irrevocably linked to The Karate Kid in my mind. Anytime I saw Hammersticks on zone chat I had to bite back the inane impulse to shout out, “Sweep the leg, Johnny!” I also saw Hammersticks talking about how large his e-peen was on chat in Rivenspire shortly after his ascension, and that for me removed any kind of budding factional loyalty I might have had for our new Emperor. To be fair to Johnny, he was an encouraging and active Emperor in Cyrodiil zone chat during the time DC was on top. Recently, however, I have not seen hide or hair of him, and it has been up to other DC leaders like Bitaken, Reevo, Egypt, and Senior Fluffykins to organise groups and take up the slack.

Regardless of my opinion of our newly minted Emperor, Hammerstick's reign coincided with a period of dominance by DC which would continue until the end of April. DC was able to keep Hammersticks on the throne for a Wabbajack record of exactly four days and 9 hours between 15 April to 19 April 2014. Unknown to most of us at this time of DC dominance, however, a major threat was looming in the east. Not only would there be a veritable diaspora of EP coming to Wabbajack from other campaigns, but even more dangerous would be groups of organised leaders who would make a decisive impact on the course of the Alliance war. Hammersticks' record would be threatened by a Pact Emperor named Fixate in the following month.

15 April 2014 2059 JST (0759 EDT) at the height of Hammerstick's reign. Blue represents the Daggerfall Covenant. Red is the Ebonheart Pact, and yellow is the Altmeri Dominion. This is the best any Alliance can do in Cyrodiil - all possible keeps have been taken, and all the Elder Scrolls are in DC hands. The home bases in the corners of the map cannot be captured.

But that, my friends, is a tale for another time.

The following is the continuation of my brief history of the first Wabbajack campaign as seen from the eyes of a casual Daggerfall Covenant player. I play two to three nights a week, mostly on weekends, and my account will be coloured by own experiences and factional bias. I'm quite certain that EP and AP players will disagree violently with various details of this account, but that's the fun of writing these pseudo-histories – it will be up the reader to winnow the truth from the hyperbole and propaganda. For my sources I have used my own experiences, daily screenshots of the campaign map, scores and leader boards, the ESO Stats website, and the flame wars on the official Zenimax forums, which have required heavy moderation on the part of Zenimax due to the amount of sledging and trash-talking being thrown back and forth between the three factions.

Three factions clash. I am hidden at the bottom of the hill while AD and EP battle on the rise.

State of the Campaigns

The following graphs are pulled from the ESOStatswebsite, and they provide a great synopsis of the various campaigns in progress. These screenshots were taken on the day the first campaign ended, and out of nine campaigns, four have been won by the Altmeri Dominion (AD), three by the Daggerfall Covenant (DC) and two by the Ebonheart Pact (EP). Out of the nine campaigns, eight have been landslides for the winning faction.

Wabbajack is clearly the most competitive of all the nine remaining North American (NA) campaigns, and it has been one of the most memorable PvP experiences I've had in an MMO to date. The Pact is poised to win in this screenshot, but until two weeks ago a Daggerfall victory was a real possibility. On the weekend of 20-21 June the Pact rallied in a big way and secured map control over the weekend, enough to create a 15-18k buffer and securing victory for them in the first campaign.

Campaign History

I. Early Days of the Dominion

The early days of Wabbajack were dominated by the Altmeri Dominion, but unfortunately I did not start playing PvP until 9 April, which means the record of who these early Emperors were are lost to this account. All I know is that when I entered Cyrodiil on this date AD were leading the campaign by a short margin, but were about to be eclipsed by DC soon afterwards.

II. Reign of the Covenant

DC overtook AD on the campaign scoreboard on or around 10 April 2014, and they proceeded to dominate the campaign for the remainder of April. There have been three Covenant Emperors in the history of the campaign to date – Whispers to Ravens, Johnny Hammersticks and Sabre Ali. Whispers was crowned on 9 April, and was able to maintain his position on the top of the leader board for about one week before being overtaken by Johnny Hammersticks sometime in mid-April. Hammersticks was the longest serving DC Emperor in terms of overall time spent on the throne, and he holds the DC record on Wabbajack for longest continuous reign as a Covenant Emperor (four days and nine hours). Sabre Ali was crowned Emperor in the waning days of Covenant ascendancy, and he holds the dubious distinction of being the last ever Emperor on Wabbajack. Before the rise of the Pact however, DC dominated Cyrodiil completely during the month of April, building a massive lead over the other factions, and threatening to run away with the campaign.

III. Rise of the Pact

On 14 April 2014 EP successfully crowned their first Emperor on Wabbajack (Fixate). At first I thought it was an aberration, as DC would soon dethrone the red upstart, and resume their domination of the campaign. As April turned into May however, EP resistance became stronger and stronger, and it soon became apparent that they were a legitimate threat. The Pact Emperor was no mere figure-head. Fixate's team gained more and more notoriety, as it became clear that they were an organised group of maximum level players with clear, well-honed strategies. They were also not shy at posting their exploits on the official forums, and a pair of videos showing their team wiping zergs of blue players made the rounds.

Fixate and his crew were not the only reason for EP's resurgence. There are also two or three other EP crews out there who are organised and capable, with the most prominent being the Vokundein guild who announced their transfer to Wabbajack with much fanfare on the official forums. Campaign transfers are a contentious issue in TESO at the moment, as the current cost for changing campaigns is extremely low – 15,000 Alliance points. This is a trivial amount and can be accumulated in a single evening if you are running with a strong group which can successfully cap or defend multiple times. Since there are 10 total campaigns it is very easy for players to desert losing campaigns and jump into others where their faction is dominating. This was predicted by everyone prior to launch, so it boggles the mind as to why Zenimax kept transfer costs so low. It also makes possible the exploits of some Oceanic AD guilds which are jumping from campaign to campaign in order to farm the title of Emperor (more on this later).

In late April and early May there was a massive diaspora of EP to Wabbajack, so much so that the EP guild Vokundein began to complain that the excess numbers were ruining their fun. By mid-May EP was firmly in control and ahead on the scoreboard, and by virtue of their continued success attracted even more EP to Wabbajack. EP only dominated one other campaign (Goldbrand), so there were dual incentives for EP players in the remaining campaigns to move to Wabbajack - leave a campaign where they were being trounced, and move to a campaign where they were actually winning. Similarly, DC also began to bleed players as the fair weather players migrated to Bloodthorn, Chrysamere and Volendrung where DC are the undisputed masters. EP began to pull away, extending their lead even further. Fixate and his team mate Nicolle became regular fixtures on the Tamriel throne, trading Emperorships every time either of them pulled ahead of each other on the Alliance leaderboard. I have to give respect to Fixate – that blasted bugger is EVERYWHERE, and he will fight on his own without his posse at his back on occasions. Fixate also holds the record as the longest serving Emperor on Wabbajack, clocking in at just over six days and two hours.

Hiding after a DC siege is destroyed by an EP counter. The burning remnants of our siege engines litter the field, while EP fan out in search of stragglers.

IV. Leaders of the Covenant

The silver lining in the DC exodus from Wabbajack was that it revealed which guilds had ticker (heart) and who would be sticking it out in the long run. In May I began to PvP on a semi-regular basis with the Order of Australia (OOA). Our very first PvP night was an amazing success, with lots of participants and commensurate success to boot. In my opinion our initial success was not based on the fact that we were super-organised and capable, but rather more the case of numbers and enthusiasm carrying the day against similarly inexperienced opposition. Since that time, however, numbers and participation have dwindled to almost nothing, and I've had to look further afield for an Oceanic guild to PvP with.

In addition to joining OOA's PvP events, I've also made the effort to join the other guilds around the Daggerfall faction in order to see how they operate. To date I have joined the following crews in their battles around Cyrodiil:

DC Elite (DCE) - Reevo

Einharjar (EHJ) - Bitaken

Eminent Gaming (EG) – Brandon-South-Ga

Jabbawocky (JW) – Senior Fluffykins, Egypt (?)

Psijic Aes Sedai – Hermaeus Mora

RISE – Prince Jarvan (quit?), Aareon (?)

I've not only joined the above teams on their roams, but also hopped onto Teamspeak (TS) in order to see how the guild leaders led their respective teams. For me the most impressive is Bitaken's EHJ crew, because Bitaken is not only knowledgeable and organised, but also accommodating, decisive and courteous on TS. Reevo's team is also impressive, but for different reasons. I've been with his crew when they engaged and wiped Fixate's EP team on a number of occasions, and they seem to be DC's answer to EP's “elites”. They are very similar to many top Rated BG teams I've played with in the sense that they only accept high-level players (VR5+, but I managed to sneak in as VR3+), and they would be what less charitable people term as “elitist jerks”. I have no problem with “elitist jerks” because for me competence trumps good manners up to a certain point, and Reevo's crew never crossed that threshold. In fact, when one of Reevo's crew pointed out that there was a level 30 in the group and suggested kicking him, Reevo defended him by saying “he's been with us for over an hour, he follows directions to a T, he's always first to our objectives and he uses his CDs when we need them – I ain't kicking him.” Of course, Reevo then erased the good will he had engendered by calling rival team leader Fluffykins a loser on zone chat, but ah well, nobody is perfect.

Senior Fluffykins is another prominent team leader whose guild has been in Wabbajack since the very beginning of early access. His crew numbers Egypt and Whispers to Ravens in their ranks, and I'm not entirely sure of their guild structure or organisation, or who actually heads their organisation. Egypt is a stalwart of the Covenant, always being active and encouraging on zone chat, and the scale of his contribution can be gauged on the fact that most EP teams know who he is (you can hear Fixate's team calling him out by name on their videos). Prince Jarvan of RISE is another excellent team leader, using his expertise from Guild Wars 2 and DAOC to good effect in TESO, but unfortunately for the Covenant I believe he has quit the game. Brandon-South-Ga of Eminent Gaming is the youngest of all the DC leaders known to me, clocking in at 19 years of age (Reevo is 30 and Bitaken I suspect is older than that). Hermaeus Mora of Psijic Aes Sedai is a quietly spoken but capable leader with big ambitions – nothing less than helping organise the Covenant on a unified front across all the campaigns. His guild has an all access TeamSpeak server for all the Covenant, and they have a war room in which they invite all the prominent leaders to confer and plan strategy.

Riders of ROHAN! Erm, RISE! Prepare to charge! Messing around with Prince Jarvan's team.

If there are two words I can use to describe the relationship between the various DC teams operating in Cyrodiil, it would be harmonious dysfunctionality. Reevo and Fluffykins overtly dislike each other, and constantly harangue each other in zone chat. Bitaken, Hermaeus Mora and Reevo are all critical of Brandon, although they grudgingly concede that his guild serves a valuable purpose in organising random players into coherent groups. My own PvP guild leader, MouseKime, dislikes Fluffykins. And so it goes.

For me this kind of fractured community, with all its rivalries and jostling, has more in common with the real world than the kind of MMO utopia. Anyone who has ever worked in political lobbying of any sort, or tried to get various agencies or rival departments to cooperate together will know the kind of obstacles people confront when facing egos, entrenched privilege, and out and out idealists (or fanatics, depending on where you stand). And like in the real world, it is through the work of compromisers and bridge-builders through which real progress is made. In this make-believe world of Cyrodiil an appeal to the best interests of the Covenant (i.e. winning the campaign) is usually enough to make these various groups put aside their differences and work together. Reevo racing to Fluffykin's aid at is the best example I saw in which two rival teams work together to drive back a common enemy. Of course when it was over, zone chat dissolved into an acrimonious row over who had actually saved the day, but the pragmatist in me I was satisfied – the keep was secured, our supply line remained open, and EP had been driven back. Let them argue - the objective had been achieved.

V. Return of the Dominion

Out of all the factions I know the least about the Dominion, and my observations are based primarily on what I have seen when facing them on the field. For the longest time they were the whipping boys of the campaign, consigned to irrelevance as DC and EP traded blows for campaign supremacy. In or around 26 May, a group of AD ex-Emperors came to Wabbajack to farm the title of Emperor, and they succeeded in completely upsetting the balance of power.

The entry of the ex-Emperor team (as they would later be known in DC) made a dramatic impact because they were an organised and skilled team composed of high-level players. Many of them were ex-Emperors which gave them access to the Emperor skill tree, and furthermore they were able to exploit the guesting and campaign transfer system to the fullest for their own benefit. Possession of keeps and scrolls gives players various buffs while their faction maintains control of these items and locations in a player's home campaign REGARDLESS of whether or not the players are actually playing in their home campaign or guesting in another. In other words, you get the full benefits of the buffs your faction has won in your home campaign even if you are a guest in another. Their modus operandi, as far as I can tell, is as follows. Pay 15,000 AP to transfer to Wabbajack, which is a mere pittance. Bring your guild of ex-Emperors over as guests to assist you in order to maximise the benefits of the buffs granted by your AD-dominated campaign. Secure the Emperorship. Transfer off the campaign in order to let the next person in line to get their shot at the throne.

The most elaborate oil trap in history.

Between the period of 26 May to 18 June, the AD ex-Emperor team was able to successfully crown a line of yellow Emperors - The-Humble-Soul, Kurudin, Che, Xorvak, Cloneinnk and Dragonstar. This was no small feat – unlike the blatant Emperor farming occurring on the two week server of Celarus, these AD had to overcome significant DC and EP resistance. The AD ex-Emperor team on Wabbajack was the strongest team in the campaign in my opinion – everywhere they went they would basically win the engagements, and only through the application of overwhelming force and numbers could they be dislodged. Stalling or delaying this team became a legitimate tactic, and their location was always reported in zone chat in the latter days of the campaign. It was not until I ran with Reevo's team that I found a crew that could stand toe to toe with these yellow terrors, and even then our chances were barely even. We rated the ex-Emperor team higher than Fixate and his crew in terms of threat potential, and they posed a deadly threat to both factions because it became increasingly more apparent that the winner of the campaign would not be determined by DC or EP, but by whoever AD allowed to win. This led to a host of accusations on the forums where both sides accused the other of making a secret deal with AD to gang up on their respective factions.

As far as I am aware no deal was ever struck on the DC side, but there was a concerted effort to direct all our energies on EP only, and to leave AD alone. Some of my guildies are adamant that AD and EP were in cahoots, but my own personal observation is that yellow would stomp on whichever team was losing at any given point. If EP was pressing in for a scroll, it was almost certain that AD would attack the other (each faction has two scrolls), effectively double-teaming our faction. The reverse was also true - if DC ever pushed for a scroll we could almost count on AD taking the opportunity to grab the other. It became more and more important as the campaign wound down to present a strong front, so as to present a less inviting target to AD incursions.

VI. Ebonheart End Game

In the closing stages there was a real possibility of DC being able to overtake the Pact in the last two weeks of the campaign. At one point DC was only approximately 7,000 points behind, and given our recent momentum an amazing comeback was potentially on the cards. Alas, it was not to be. On the weekend of 21 and 22 June EP rallied, and in a tremendous display managed to secure map control and the Scrolls for the Pact. Their extended map control over two to three days blew out their lead to 20,000 points, creating an unassailable lead and securing their victory in this first Wabbajack campaign.

Armistice

The war is over, and the Pact have emerged victors. Congratulations to the Pact for their victory as well as for being such tenacious foes. This was a close run thing, and there have been many twists and turns in this campaign, as well as many amazing battles. The open world PvP in Cyrodiil is the best implementation to date of a persistent world where armies march, counter-march, lay sieges, defend sieges, break sieges, hold choke points, cut supply lines and carry out bold, impudent raids deep within enemy territory.

Fixate's EP team and the AD ex-Emperor crew have proven themselves as capable and excellent opponents and villains. I've enjoyed reading the back and forth on the forums, as well as getting to know the various leaders and guilds on my faction and fighting with their respective teams. I'm still only VR4, but this ain't WoW Arena, League of Legends, or Starcraft 2– asymmetry is an inherent part of open world PvP, and one of the attractions of this format for me is trying to overcome existing disadvantages by any means available at your disposal. For me this involved working tightly with groups, utilising support abilities rather than being a front line soldier, and using siege engines in support during large group fights. Meatbag catapults and boiling oil can absolutely decimate groups, and they should be the first thing a lowbie arms him/herself with when they enter Cyrodiil. It behooves non-max level players to utilise surprise, terrain and local superiority to make up for level and gear differential. This game as it stands favours small, organised tactical groups of 12-24, and the numerous enemy zergs I have seen destroyed by determined and organised attacks attest to this fact.

Whether or not Wabbajack will remain as competitive in the new campaign remains to be seen. I know that most of the EP guilds will be staying, but some of the DC leaders have already signalled their intention to move to other campaigns, notably Veteran only campaigns (if implemented). EP might end up with a campaign like Auriel's Bow, which is completely dominated by AD and where there are no fights to be had anywhere. At the moment the optimal meta-gaming strategy is to migrate to a campaign where your faction is completely dominant, acquire player buffs through securing map control against minimal or non-existent opposition, then guesting into other campaigns for actual PvP fights. This might be the fate of Wabbajack unless Zenimax implements some changes to their campaign transfer and guesting systems, which are far too lenient in my opinion. For now though I count myself as being lucky in choosing Wabbajack as my initial server, and having been able to take part in some really memorable open world PvP. In my second post on TESO I mentioned that my sister unsubbed in a fit of disgust at the numerous technical issues plaguing the game, and only reluctantly resubscribed as a show of solidarity to our gaming circle. A couple of weekends ago, my sister, my guildies and I were on a vast field running for our lives, trying to cover Egypt who was carrying an Elder Scroll. Behind us were the vast teeming hordes of AD, more I had ever seen in one place ever, and to our right, streaming over the hill to the north were masses of EP intent on cutting us off and stealing our prize. During this biggest battle of my MMO life, surrounded by enemies on all sides and being supported by desperate DC reinforcing from the west throwing themselves at the oncoming masses to staunch the tide, my sister said to me, “Wow – this game is awesome.”

DC trying desperately to slow down the AD horde chasing down our scroll. People fight around me as I gallop past in a vain attempt to catch up to our scroll runner.

PvP might save this theme park MMO after all. It might not be enough to save it from an ignominious F2P fate, but it has salvaged it in the eyes of my gaming circle, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the only thing that matters.

In the red corner, Wildstar.

In the blue, The Elder Scrolls Online, commonly abbreviated as either TESO or ESO.

Two up and coming subscriber-based MMOs with aspirations of greatness. Or at least, a decent market share. The former is banking on a zany sci-fi aesthetic, a telegraph combat system, player housing and an appeal to old school attunement raiding as its foundations for victory. The latter is riding on the coattails of a beloved IP and comes on the heels of one of the most popular single-player games of all time. Skyrim was voted by Australia as its most popular game in a recent poll conducted by ABC's Good Game television series, and TESO has attempted to leverage this popularity to attract subscribers to it, with mixed results.

The Champion.

At ringside sits the champion, a massive panda puffing on a fat cigar. His greatness is unquestioned by all, regardless of whether they love him or loathe him. He'll be in the Hall of Fame one day, and his records (12 million at his peak, and over 7 million currently) may never be broken. But for now he is taking a respite from training, and watching these two contenders slug it out in the ring before him. He is unimpressed with either – his contempt for his competitors is evident by his long lay-off, and his refusal to release his new expansion until November this year, more than two years after Mists of Pandaria. He knew new contenders were coming in the interim – he just didn't care. But now he is back, and if you look closely enough, you can see his fur giving way to green skin and rippling muscle. Warlords of Draenoris coming.

Final Fantasy 14.

If you scan the ringside a few more prominent figures emerge into focus from the smoky, raucous gloom. Final Fantasy 14 is dressed in classical Japanese “cool” - a mixture of denim, leather, fur and dark shades. His crazy hair style belies the gaunt face and the glittering eyes – he is a respected fighter, having garnered more than two million subscribers in his early career. His mixed heritage – Western and Japanese subscribers on PCs and consoles – give him an exotic look. Behind him sits an older woman of Scandinavian descent in a form fitting bodysuit adorned with tech. Cold blue eyes peer out behind a face streaked with implants and silver geodes, and combined with her reputation for hostility, ensures that no one comes near her without an explicit invitation. EVE Online is old, formidable, and unique. Her 500,000 followers come from all walks of life, but it is her acolytes in null sec that garner the most attention from the press and the outside world with their massive, record-breaking bloc wars. Her attention is not directed at the fight, but with two up and coming amateurs sitting across the ring from her. Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous will be making their pro debuts next year, and she will be their chief rival.

EVE Online.

There are others too, not belonging to the subscriber-school of fighting, who have chosen to grace ringside with their presence. Guild Wars 2, Marvel Heroes, Lord of the Rings Online and Star Trek Online stand clustered together in the aisle, laughing loudly at some shared joke, while The Secret World sits with his back to the wall in the far recesses of the stands, eyes never still. These F2P fighters, free agents without recurring monthly payments, were once derided as has-beens, over-the-hill fighters trying to hold onto their glory days, no better than hawkers and used car salesmen in their frantic attempts to peddle off whatever content they had left. No longer. Star Wars: The Old Republic looks hale and whole in a simple brown and white cloak commonly worn by the Jedi. Described as one of the greatest failures in MMO history, her clear brown eyes show only calm and detachment. She made a spectacular debut, racing to over 1 million subscribers in the first three days of her release. This was followed by a more spectacular fall from grace, a transition to a hybrid F2P model, and predictions about her eventual demise. She has shocked them all by her resilience and heart. Since switching to F2P she has recouped her costs, and generates a steady income stream for her manager, Electronic Arts. But the stigma remains, and the fight tonight, while not necessarily meaning the end for either TESO or Wildstar, is in many ways one for prestige. Critics of both fighters have harangued loudly about their eventual demise to F2P. Only time will tell if these critics were right.

SWTOR.

But back to the fight.

The two contenders pace in their respective corners and receive their last minute instructions as the ringside announcer finishes the last vestiges of pre-fight pageantry. There is a moment's silence for the fallen – Warhammer Onlineand Vanguard are honoured and remembered - and then the fighters are introduced to tumultuous acclaim. The referee gives them their final instructions, and then steps back.

TESO came out swinging first, having been released on 4 April. Almost immediately it was sent reeling back under a storm of criticism. Scorn and derision were piled on the title, and the knees buckled and bent, but did not fall. Forbeswent ahead and predicted that it would be “the biggest video game disaster of 2014.” The Errant Penman wrote A Farewell to TESO, a beautifully written elegy to the the game TESO never became. Review after review lashed it, bloodied its face, gashed its skin, and broke its nose. Comparisons to the great Skyriminvariably led to damning reviews. Worse still, it became apparent to all at ringside that TESO was not fight ready. Crashes, bugs and glitches marred its performance. People who were willing to try the game left in disgust. TESO also debut with an ill-conceived Imperial edition, locking an entire race behind a paywall and giving its critics more ammunition to crucify the title.

TESO.

Wildstar came out two months after TESO on 3 June. In contrast to TESO it received glowing reviews and accolades from the blogsphere. In many ways it was the Chosen One – the anointed successor, the greatest thing since sliced bread, the game which would re-invent a tiring, ailing genre. Just as TESO was made a pariah Wildstar was embraced and loved and elevated by the blogsphere. Most games would envy the critical reception Wildstar received upon release.

In fighting however, it's not what the critics say, but what the fighters do that matters.

TESO gave its subscribers five extra days of free time as an apology for its extremely rough release. It moved its maintenance days from Tuesday and Friday to Monday and Thursday so that Oceanic players could play the game on Friday evenings. It migrated its European servers from the US to Europe in order to reduce the latency of European players. It clamped down hard on the gold sellers which plagued its release, so much so that they have virtually disappeared from Tamriel. It consolidated the various PvP campaigns in order to minimise the effect of Emperor-farming, a deplorable practice which essentially stripped the title of any meaning. It pre-loaded weapon swapping animations to give more responsiveness to combat. And the quick and efficient responses to customer tickets have impressed both me and my gaming circle, and have done much to offset our initial disappointment at the shoddy state of the game upon release. Iteration by iteration, TESO is getting its feet back under it. Staggered and wobbled in the first round, it is beginning to fight back. In June it had over 750,000 subscribers, which made it third behind WoW and Final Fantasy 14.

Wildstar, on the other hand, is living and dying by its decision to make old school raiding the centrepiece of its endgame. For all the critical claim it has garnered, it has managed to scrape together a paltry 450,000 subscribers in the first month of its life. And now the news that Carbine is consolidating their servers ALREADY, barely three months after their release. If MMOs truly were fighters, then Wildstaris what we would call a front-runner – dangerous early, but prone to gassing out and withering away in the later rounds.

Wildstar.

The most disappointing thing has been the lack of heart shown by Wildstar's early supporters. As Wildstar falters, and new, younger fighters appear on the horizon, these fair-weather supporters are abandoning the bandwagon in droves, citing a general ennui with MMOs as a genre as an excuse for turning their back on their chosen champion. In a time where Wildstar needs more subs than ever, they are cancelling, quitting, and showing their true colours. Like a swarm of locusts they are already gathering around Archeage, ready to pick it apart and consume it before moving on to their next meal. The remaining hold-outs, those who genuinely love the game and continue to support it regardless of its faltering popularity, have my respect. I know how they feel.

So Wildstar battles on, increasingly bereft of friends, his movements growing less graceful and more laboured as the fight moves into the middle rounds. But TESO doesn't look that hearty either. In its last update TESO had to make a plea for more players on the public test server, and the number of PvP campaigns do not seem to reflect a population measuring over three quarters of a million players. Furthermore, the news that Zenimax has laid off a number of its staff bodes ominously for the future of the game. Wildstar might go to F2P earlier than TESO, but that would be cold comfort if TESO tumbles soon after.

At ringside, a gossamer of emotion flickers across SWTOR's face. She has seen and experienced this all before, and perhaps her thoughts are with both fighters as they struggle to establish themselves. Then again they are her opponents and rivals, and there is little room for sentiment in their profession. Final Fantasy 14 remains alert and attentive, carefully watching TESO. As number two and number three on the rankings, they will jealously guard their positions in anticipation for an inevitable clash. As for the champion, the great panda has already turned away from the fight and is chatting amiably with his cousins Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm. He doesn't care who wins – neither of the fighters are a threat to him. But several rows back, another fighter watches the fight with an intensity belied by her fair complexion and youthful looks. Archeage boasts a Korean heritage, a claim of sandbox based play, open world PvP, and a player-driven economy reminiscent of EVE. She will make her professional debut next week. Unlike the two fighters slugging it out in the ring, however, she has eschewed the subscriber path, and will begin her career as a F2P fighter. New age, or old guard? Will the disciples of F2P triumph, or do the fighters of old school subscription still have a part to play in this sport of ours?

Archeage.

As for me, sitting in the stands far from the action, my money remains firmly on TESO outlasting Wildstar as a subscription-based title. I don't even like TESO that much – the only part I really like is the Alliance War, and that was a style pioneered by one of the early greats of the bare knuckle era, Dark Age of Camelot. The rest I have seen before, albeit without the voice acting and with worse graphics. But nothing would please me more than to see TESO prosper and do well, especially after all the scorn, derision and criticism that was heaped upon it during its release. Every month it remains non-F2P is another month which illustrates how wrong many of these learned commentators are, and how worthless their opinion is when it comes to the trends which rule the MMO market. My opinion is equally worthless, but nonetheless I did make the prediction in March that TESO would not go F2P in a year's time, and thus I feel obliged to put my money where my mouth is by remaining a subscriber. The introduction of the Imperial City, a possible Arena mode as well as a future justice system to enable open world PvP are future features which interest a player of my own peculiar tastes. The transition to consoles in December may also give the game a much needed shot in the arm. Final Fantasy 14 has shown that there is a market for MMOs in consoles. Perhaps TESO can parlay this and leverage it to create a sustainable base from which to build upon. As a supporter and subscriber of the game, I can only hope.

WoW PvP Changes in Patch 5.2

X-Com, Player Immortality And Emergent Narratives In Gaming

WoW is for Morons and Slackers: A Dissenting View

Massacred by Gladiators: Rated CTF Games in WoW

The Quest For Meaningful World PvP, Part I - Eve Online and WoW

CFC Victorious in the Largest Online Battle in MMO History

WoW PvP Changes in Patch 5.4

The Quest for Meaningful World PvP, Part II - Asymmetry and Fairness in Persistent Worlds

Diaries of a Ganker, Part I - The Horde Triumphant

Diaries of a Ganker, Part II - Landfall in Pandaria

Diaries of a Ganker, Part III - The Art of Combat

Diaries of a Ganker, Part IV - Cross Realm Exploitation

Diaries of a Ganker, Part V - Farewell to Arms (Season 14 Wrap-Up)

Letters from Tamriel, Part I - Prophets, Prognosticators and Party-Poopers

The Quest for Meaningful World PvP, Part III - World PvP as a Driver for Complex Storytelling

Letters from Tamriel, Part II - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Rise and Fall of WoW as an E-Sport

Letters from Tamriel, Part III - Welcome to Wabbajack, Son

Letters from Tamriel, Part IV - The War in Wabbajack

TESO, Wildstar and Archeage Walk Into A Bar