A Whole New World

So, in one sweeping motion, I’ve gone and completely sold out on two separate fronts. By rolling Alliance, on a PvE server, I’ve completely undone anything I ever held sacred about the game. A trifecta could easily be argued with the fact I chose the class that willingly refers to themselves as “Huntards”.

After the whole “Hey I’m Gonna Transfer” and “Oops, I Need to Apply For Mensa Guild Membership Status Again, Apparently” fiascos, I’m finding it harder to log into Dreadmaul for anything more involved that checking the mail, popping into Dire Maul looking for the rare spawn, or reposting my 8 zillion Netherweb Spider Silk stacks for retardedly undercut prices. I took a trip to America recently as well, and found my old roommates from Oakland playing on some PvE server with horribly geared alliance toons. They talked of hoping to 'one day have enough in the guild to make it into Kara', and the pity valve in my head asploded. Now I’m a Draeni Huntard with a bear and two greens. I actually rolled another tank, until I realized I actually don’t hate myself enough to suffer tanking pugs all the way to 70 again. That was a nice feeling.

Now I’m torn between bringing one of my toons over to this server with a bag full of gold, or just doing it the hard way, and leaving the Horde toons behind on Dreadmaul. PvP to PvE transfers are a one way street, though, and in the end, I figure I’d end up just regretting it later if I did.

A few things about PvE servers have already struck me as odd, the first and foremost being that you can apparently have Horde and Alliance toons on the same server. The ramifications of this are pretty deep, coming from servers where you need to pick a side and stick with it (assuming you don’t have two accounts, I guess). If you do ever happen to find some sap that accidentally tagged himself for PvP and you kill him, you can expect to get a flood of tells in about 30 seconds from the dipshit’s alt crying about how hard his life is now that he has to run all the way from the graveyard back to his body. The 45 seconds it took to log out, get on the new toon, and send me a tell is longer that it would have taken to run back, Einstein. As far as I’m concerned, this whole “jump on the alt and cry about it” thing is a perk in my book. You always had to use your imagination before to concoct nerd rage stories about the people you camped. Now they telegram it to you. Bonus.

Can you send your opposing faction toons mail on a PvE server? I honestly don’t know. Are you still forced to post crap in the neutral AH to get it over to the other side? It seems like Bottom Scanner is going to get re-enabled on my toon once I have enough gold to make it worthwhile. Anyone know any addons that make your ignore list larger? I have a feeling 100 names is going to dry up pretty quick.

Here's what I don’t understand: since Horde and Alliance are so buddy-buddy, /waving and /hugging and /dancing together, why don’t they just allow them to group and raid together? Why can’t I just bring my rogue over, and raid with the Humans and Draeni? Hell, keep the language barrier there for chat, who the hell chats during raids anyway?

The other big eye opener on PvE servers seems to be what I'll refer to as Dueling Syndrome. Its like these guys are so starved for PvP conflict, that they duel anywhere and everywhere. I was actually in a cave at level 7, fighting spiders, when some guy ran up and tried to duel me. I thought he had misclicked the invite button, so I declined the duel and waited for him to resend a party invite, figuring he was on the same quest as me. Sure enough, the duel window appears again, and in chat he says:

[1.General] Nubsauce: please

…

He was asking so politely, how could I refuse? I accepted the duel, beat him down to 5%, then just walked off as mobs aggroed to him and killed him. Awesome duel, bro. You’re welcome. Don’t mention it. Fast forward an hour or so and I’m back in the Exodar where people are spamming trade looking for tanks for a Crossroads raid.

Tanks.

Like “Taunt, Sunder Armor, Watch Your Threat” Tanks. Apparently a Crossroads raid on a PvE server just involves killing the NPC guards, because no one is going to bother flagging themselves for PvP to engage the other faction. I guess you showed them! And people wonder why transfers are a one way street? Seriously? I’m not Gladiator Joe, and honestly, I tend to focus on raid content on most of my toons. For all intents and purposes, once I zone into Black Temple, whatever the hell is happening outside the instance is pretty much irrelevant. But getting to the instance, and questing outside, all require a bit more effort. That seems to be the part of the game that makes it fun. Getting rolled by 5 toons versus your one sucks, but it’s fun if you can focus fire one of them and at least give them a corpse run, too. In the end, I wouldn’t really trade it for the tree hugging “Hands Across Azeroth” I seem to be coming across on Zul’jin. The only reason I’m here at all is to raid with old friends from the states, and that’s probably going to last a month or so before I get tired of the schedule only lining up on the weekends. That’s the reason I went to oceanic servers in the first place.

Then again, this server was the 4^th in the world to finish the whole Shattered Sun Offensive event, and they apparently PUG BT and Hyjal on the weekends. Maybe getting to 70 will be less hassle, and I can get to the part of the game I enjoy more, raiding.

I’m interested to hear from you guys… why roll (or not roll) PvE? Is it worth it to bypass the drama of leveling around Hillsbrad / Southshore? Do you regret choosing one side or the other? At this point I’m still only level 16, but the vibe of the server just feeling so different, coupled with the fact that I’m seeing places like Stormwind for the first time (and have no idea where the bank / mailbox / AH is), all make it feel like I’m playing a totally different game. Maybe that alone will make it worthwhile in the end.

Probably not.