Endgame PvP Debate

Before anything else is said, here is a shameless plug for the Novograd Times - I will be starting up a "guiding new players" column on there soon. But no worries, all my opinionated observations and such will still be posted on this blog.

The first thing we need to get straight is: Is Allods a pvp game? Some people will say yes, other people will say no. It seems like the game itself has confusing goals, as it includes some heavy pve elements (unflagging yourself, best gear obtainable through pve content) as well as some heavy pvp elements (quests that flag you, war banners, pvp ranks) that intertwine with each other. The game can go either way, but to have pve AND pvp be equally important... well that's a balancing feat that even the WoW-gods have issues with.

As an arena junkie from WoW, I love organized pvp. I participate in world pvp when I'm forced to, but it's not something I will go out of the way to seek. From my experiences, pvp is neither challenging nor fun unless my opponent(s) are the same level as me and wearing similar gear - this is when skill comes to play. One-shotting lesser geared players or getting outnumbered is a waste of time to me... This isn't saying that world pvp only involves scenarios like that, but to be honest, it's like that more often than not. You kill person, person is mad, person gets all his friends and camps you. Sure sounds fun to me...

Battlegrounds can end up the same way if there are large amounts of gear discrepancy... which there IS at 40 on Allods, seeing how just a few stats can make a huge difference. If one team has better gear than the other, the lesser team will get rolled. So if Allods decides to introduce battlegrounds, there will have to be a LOT of tweaking to ensure balance.

As for worrying what kills world pvp: it occurs when players can unflag when they are forced to face the other faction (think pve realms on WoW, while doing sunstrider isle dailies - those were some of my best world pvp encounters on a pvp realm), and it occurs when better/easier gear can be obtained through other means; be it battlegrounds, raiding/heroics, astral, or whatever. From what I have observed on the forums, world pvp at 40 is so low that many players try to get their max pvp rank in the mid 20s, where Asee-Teph offers many similar-level pvp encounters. All in all, world pvp is already semi-dead at endgame - because there is no reason to pvp! Why waste time hunting down unflagged 40s when you can jump into your astral ship and get epics?

So what's the goal of Allods? Will it be a pvp-centric game? Or a pve-centric game? Only time will tell with new patches!

Snippet about my progress: Sitting in Eljune at level 29 - might be staying here for awhile as I have exams coming up soon AND I'm waiting for 2-3 people to catch up in levels. :)