The world PvP gained a resurgence with the release of the Honor system, but the DHKs have some pretty bad effects on the game. Since the Phase 2 release, there were attempts to get together a raid to Undercity and defeat Sylvanas. But that always immediately gets shot down, because of the risk of getting DHKs, which would be huge and unavoidable in a city raid.
Everyone is also either too scared to venture anywhere near a town, or people hide inside the town so that the opposing faction will risk getting DHKs and get swarmed by NPC spawning guards. Then its mostly waiting for them to finally leave so the fighting can continue for a bit before that happens again.
Since Classic launched there were several city raids on Orgrimmar, back when there was no Honor System or reward of any kind and people did it just for fun. But now that there is an actual honor reward for doing them for defeating the boss, people actively avoid that in order to keep their DHK count at zero (even though I don’t think it matters yet, as everyone has zero Contribution Points anyway and thus there’s nothing to lose yet).
I tried to avoid getting DHKs myself on principle, yet I have a bunch just because someone in the PvP raid attacked an NPC on the other side of the map. And people get really upset when that happens. So doing a city raid like that would most likely eliminate any potential reward you might get. I expect this attitude to only get worse once they actually have something to lose.
I kinda find that disappointing, as those few city raids on Orgrimmar were a lot of fun, yet it seems it won’t happen anymore, as people are too scared of DHKs. And if it somehow does anyway, it will set you back weeks honor-wise.
Tbh, if they had to be added at all, I just wish it would be a bit later on. DHKs weren’t released at the same time as the actual honor system anyway, so adding them in alongside the honor system is actually less authentic than not adding them right now.
Funny thing is, DHKs don’t matter during the first week. They reduce your rank directly, and no one has a rank to reduce. Until next Wednesday it’s a perfect time to do city raids.
Yeah, I am telling everyone that it is now or never, but either they are convinced DHKs will reduce the Honor they gain at the end of the week (they don’t) or they just straight up want to keep their count at zero, “because it looks ugly”. The second one is actually surprisingly common, way more than the people that just don’t believe you.
Like, I understand it to an extent, but if you engage in a mass world PvP at all, you will get one sooner or later, through no fault of your own.
DHK’s where introduced back then, because people where killing Quest givers etc in the low level zones and so people couldn’t even pick up quests anymore.
If you want to avoid any DHK’s, don’t go PvP’ing in a raid or large group and it’s still perfectly possible to do city raids without gaining any DHK’s yourself so long you don’t touch NPC tagged as “Civilian” like seriously don’t even touch them and you’re fine.
Back in the day, there were city raids every week and people still avoided DHK’s or got upset if they got any by accident. One of the big reasons, you don’t go into a city raid as a actual raid group but everyone solo or small groups.
Thinking you need to be in a raid group, to do a raid on a city is kinda silly cause you basically just need people willing to do so and on the server I played we often had “raids” of hundreds of people all individually or in small groups going towards a city to raid them.
If you think farming honor in a raid group is best, you’re totally wrong as well as it’s actually the worst way to gain honor.
Thing is, people don’t want to do it, because of the risk of getting a DHK. Even if it was all solo, people still don’t want to do it. They don’t want to do it now when it literally doesn’t matter. I know you could have everyone go solo, even if it wouldn’t be ideal for coordination. Thing is, no matter how hard you explain that, people are so scared of it they just don’t want to listen. DHKs don’t matter now and people still don’t want to do it.
Also, quest NPCs are still ganked by people that don’t care about their rank (I had to help a guildie against one) and DHKs do not apply to level 60 rogues ganking lowbies in SV, so questing is bound to be pretty miserable regardless.
They might not want to raid cities now, but they will want to later on.
Most people are currently hyped by the release of Honor and only interested in getting the most Honor they can possibly get. Not calculating in on how to get the most Honor, but that’s another story.
In a week or a few weeks, you won’t see the mass chaos you see everywhere right now cause people will get burned out from going all over the world looking for people to kill to gain a bit of honor.
You’ll find Rogues waiting to ambush people at FP’s, you’ll always be finding people in BRM waiting for other people just to kill them or prolong them from entering the dungeon they’re planning to do, you might occasionally run into a small group on the boats or Zeppelins killing people for fun or Honor and most of all you’ll see most people doing their own things again.
In time, you’ll see spam in Trade chat from people trying to organize city raids etc.
And you’ll very rarely ever see a raid group, going over the world trying to gain Honor as it’s the least effective way to do so.
In my experience, in a few weeks people will just stop caring about WPvP at all once it has gotten old, even less than they actually do. Then once BGs are released, people interested in PvP move over there and that’s it. The rest will continue raiding, doing dungeons, fishing or whatever they are doing. It’s not like there was a huge interest in doing city raids even before DHKs were a thing and now people are so scared of them some of them believe any named enemy NPC can give them. The gankers will continue to rack up DHKs from quest givers as if they were a badge of honor.
Maybe that’s just my realm. Dunno. But I don’t think there won’t be no negative effect. Before Classic was released, people were all about “No Changes”. Releasing the Honor System without delaying the DHKs is a pretty major change to the original experience. I wouldn’t exactly be happy if they added them in with say Phase 3, but atleast I would have the experience without them with Phase 2.
I don’t want to go in on the other parts as I’m getting tired, but as a healer it’s extremely easy to rank up right now. Go to Hillsbrad and start healing random people from your faction who are trying to kill the opposite faction and notice how many contribution points you’re getting. You’ll probably be amazed!
I agree they should just remove DHKs, if protecting quest givers is so important just make them immune to damage. WPVP is what it should all be about Horde Vs Alliance