PVE is Hard

So yeah. The entire game of WoW at this point has just deteriorated into an endless crybaby fingerpointing “NO U” fest, and it’s getting pretty hard to find excuses to log in for it anymore. One topic that never goes out of style is comparing Apples to Oranges, and the sitting back and watching people get worked up in the comments section.

I still read Ming’s blog from time to time for giggles in between my lessons, and marvel at the entire reader base’s complete disregard for … well, anything really. Then I remember that Ming’s blog sprang forth from the bowels of the Rogue Forums like Athena sprung forth from Zues’ brow, and everything suddenly makes sense again.

One of the latest posts at WoM details the adventures of 25 PvPers out to prove, once and for all, that PvP requires more skill than PvE. Their argument hinges on that fact that a guild formed a week ago basically blew through end-game content easily.

Awesome. Grats.

The part that everyone in the 13 pages of comments fails to realize, is that I could do the same with 25 random people selected off the street that were dedicated to achieving that goal. The point of this GAME is that you need to bring people together, and have them focused on the task at hand. Everything after that is trivial.

Have you ever inspected anyone during a raid and found that their spec is ‘pretty much fucking garbage for raiding’? Ever been in a raid where someone fell asleep in the middle of it? Hunter forgot to bring arrows? Shaman forgot to bring Ankhs? I don’t imagine anything like that happens during Nihilum raids. It all directly relates to the fact that Nihilum is focused on the raid content, and everyone in the raid WANTS TO BE THERE. Nobody has to log off after three attempts to do dishes. Nobody just had their bandwidth capped last night by Telstra. They are committed to the task at hand, and THAT is 90% of raiding. The other 10% boils down to just executing the task at hand, and not being a complete retard (don’t stand in flame strikes / void zones, stay out of cleaves, etc).

Bravo for finding 25 people committed to the singular task of proving that PvE is easy. Way to go. Now that you’ve done it, go ahead and try to KEEP GOING, clearing the same stupid fights week in and week out, to gear out the entire guild for the next challenge. Chances are you’ll find people falling asleep during runs, or having to walk the dog after the next wipe.

The same argument can be made for PvP, so here goes: finding 5 random people off the street, you could put together a winning PvP arena team. I hear underwear across the planet bunching up, but it’s TRUE. You aren’t the only one that knows when to cloak. People have this urge to defend whatever it is they do as being hard or difficult, when nine times out of ten, a monkey flailing around can do the same thing. Take five scrubs off the street, sit them down and teach them how their character works, and have them work together to learn the ins and outs of arena and a winning team can be made. They would need spend a while learning the game, a luxury our guild didn’t really need to deal with. I would have been more impressed, and the point would have been driven further home, if you had enlisted your grandparents to clear BT. All it would have proved is what I’ve already stated above, though.

Yes, this guild was full of people that were primarily PvPers, but you’re going to tell me they never ran an instance? They leveled their toons all the way to 70 PvPing? Is that even possible? I’m leaving out that this superhero team of PvP allstars apparently had a tier 6 equipped main tank leading them thru their runs, and used the same strats and bosskiller guides as every other PvE guild.

Everything in this game boils down to positioning, pushing buttons at the right time, and …. Uhhh… that’s pretty much it. There isn’t even a number three.

Raid boss fights / trash pulls. Stand here, hit kick when it heals / shield block when it shears / flamey flame royale when the debuff is active. Run over here at the designated time. Go.

Arena. Stand here, put your totems over there, kick or pummel during heals, run behind the pillar to LoS (line of sight) the other guy at the designated time.

PvE has an added element of threat. Going balls to the wall is frowned upon, for about the first 10 seconds of each threat wipe. Big deal. Both PvE and PvP rely on team members following the orders of the designated leader. Oh, wait… I’m, sorry… does arena not have raid leaders? That’s funny, I seem to remember Ming complaining loudly for his last 30 posts or whatever about how Serennia tells him exactly when to use his blind, thereby eliminating Ming’s Own Better Judgement from the equation. In PvE this goes without saying, as we all know about totalitarian raid leaders, be they Sebudai or that guy in the Onyxia DOTs Video.

PvP has the added element of other people. This seems like it may be a big deal, until you take into consideration that the same people you’re facing in arena are the same retards wiping raids by falling asleep on their autowalk button. This isn’t some hyper intelligent advanced alien race you’re competing against, it’s the guy asking “paper or plastic” at the checkout.

Ranking up in arena leads to opponents that know how to play better, and ranking up in PvE pits you against harder bosses that hit harder / faster, or require more precise group coordination. The gear requirements both scale. 1500s arena is going to see you fighting people in afk AV gear that haven’t learned their class mechanics yet. Big deal. It’s the equivalent of running a 5 man in Outlands. As you gear yourself up earning points in that bracket (or drops from those runs), you progress to fighting harder foes.

For some reason, in the 1500s, though, I still seem to be finding people in S3 gear. Maybe they’re carrying a scrub player up to 1850 so he can get some shoulders. Maybe they just disbanded the team to form a new one and try to go 100 wins without a loss or whatever. Regardless, I’ve never zoned into Non-Heroic Ramparts to find Curator as the last boss. I’ve also never wiped over and over in an instance and found epics in my bag from the boss that we never actually killed. Losing in arena still nets you points, although slower. You can form a roster, go into matches naked, /dance to lose ten games, and still get points at the end of the week. There is no equivalent in PvE. Ten wipes is a repair bill (although, if naked, not really), but ten wipes never nets you loot in PvE.

Battlegrounds and raids have common ground. Someone can drag their feet all raid long, and still /roll to win a piece of gear. Blatant AFKing in AV will earn you the debuff, and likewise will get you booted from a raid… but doing just enough to not appear afk is usually enough for AV or a 25 man. Harder to pull off for WSG or ZA where every slot counts, so I guess we have that in common?

Some PvEers will clear Kara, but skip Nightbane because that fight is too hard.

Some PvPers will queue dodge, if they find themselves pitted against a team that’s too hard.

The arguments go back and forth, on and on, but the simple fact stands that these are just two sides of the same coin. Neither aspect of this game is HARD, given that you have a group of like minded individuals with a goal they are working towards. Get a team of ho-hum retards and throw them in a group, and the result is the same, regardless of the destination being PvP or PvE. Epic Fail.