delete campaigns
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Which is the crux isn’t it? We’re only having this discussion in the first place because nobody (or too few) are particularly sportsmanlike when it comes to RPPvP.
We restrict abilities because people are instinctively keen to go HAM on a target which reduces the actual RP going on. We leave healing unrestricted because co-ordinated burst happens regardless. We limit CC to mitigate bursting of targets. All of the above leads to healers and their targets being pretty much immortal. Immortal people refuse to give ground based on IC injury or fatigue as battles drag out for one, two, three hours in the same spot. This leads to people getting frustrated, so begins the “cheating” (Burst, CC, ignoring collisions) to try and make something, anything, happen which in turn also reduces the actual RP going on.
Restricted or unrestricted I always found it ends up being more akin to slow paced PvP with people shouting meaningless, contradicting orders /y or spouting off witty remarks in /s. For two+ hours.
Bonus points if people corpse run if they happen to die mechanically rather than accept they’re too injured to keep fighting, or heroic leap into the backline and 1v50 an entire army while shouting one-liners just because they’re prot spec and their healers won’t stop healing them (I maintain the opinion that anyone who gets themselves surrounded that badly should be a free burst target).
You can’t feasibly “RP” while everyone is determined to ‘win’ above all else. But that’s a mentality I can’t see going away while RPPvP remains an oxymoron: A co-operative competative activity.
Which is a seperate problem. AD has been 10:1 A/H for years. Even if every Horde player turned up they’d still be outnumbered. Frankly I think campaigns need to have a hard limit of guilds or attendees on both sides. Every campaign I’ve seen seems to want the entire server to attend, which inevitably only causes problems in number balance, management and communication.
Best RPPvP I’ve ever had was between a limited circle of guilds. Anyone who acted up was easily identified and risked a guild kick. Everyone played fair. Even though it was “unrestricted” nobody really went HAM because we wanted to RP more than PvP. Less lag. Less chaos meant emotes were easier to read. Etc.
It’s impressive when the whole server comes together, but I have yet to see that happen without something going wrong. Healers, numbers, whatever. Something is out of place and it’s always because of having this belief that only ‘server’ campaigns are worth having.
Then you have the issue where certain groups bring in extra friends, who bring their friends who bring their friends who bring their friends who bring their PvP guild that has never RP’d before. To be utterly frank, I’ve seen this on Alliance far more than Horde. When it comes to “cheating” I’d say both sides are as bad as each other, but Alliance definately has a bad habit of bringing more people than promised. Way more. And there’s no easy way to deal with it. If the organisers tell them to go home, they can just ignore them and keep participating in fights. Give the go ahead to burst them? Well now they’ll burst your entire raid and now everyone is miserable.
The post was really ironic. In reality, the Alliance were told numerous times and the Alliance host was ran through the mechanics like 4 times through the course of the campaign, but they still elected to ignore that because they were promised pvp, bar a very small minority among the Alliance who tried to RP out the campaign mechanics which is the reason the Alliance was able to catch up (not really) towards the end.
((in the campaigns i’ve attended, it’s every single time the alliance that does this …))
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Might be worth noting down who is a zergbrain and who actually follows the mechanics then…
…so in future campaigns, we’d know who not to accept, and thus also remedy the Alliance outnumbering issue.
Though, same goes for Horde, so maybe it won’t help the numbers…
By de Light of de Loa, let dere now be balance; prelate facing paladin till dere be no doubt who is righteous!
Seriously, looking at Orgrimmar, it’s like the orcs suddenly and finally went extinct overnight.
It’s worth noting that I don’t mind if one side decides to opt for the zerg approach, provided they understand that it’s not going to get them a win via the campaign victory mechanics, and acting in bad faith about it should carry some level of reproach.
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I feel like “victory” mechanics are often an issue.
You add a victory condition, you turn an RP campaign into a wargame. People like to win more than anything. So begins every subtle and not so subtle attempt to try and get as much an advanatge as possible in every fight and every event. Not to mention it makes people ten times more pedantic about who won/lost XYZ at ABC and earned 123. It’s one of the things that drives people to ‘compete’ in what should be an RP campaign.
Yes, I’d love that as well - for both sides. In general, communication should be key. And if there’s clear communication happening all around, complainers have no ground to stay on, because they’d have no excuse.
However sadly the communication isn’t the best most of the times, so some people don’t understand why they’re losing.
As I understood, the context here is one side ignoring the victory mechanics,
opting to zerg the campaign instead?
I can’t say what happened at the recent campaign, but it’s something that has plagued nearly every campaign in recent memory (As in, victory conditions driving people to compete more than RP).
It works if those victory mechanics are tied to RP, rather than PvP. Ogrepowered did it like that, and that’s why Horde was able to salvage that a win out of that campaign.
Also this is the main issue.
You’d think that in the age of discord and campaign-specific servers there’d be more communication between the groups involved. I understand why there were issues with ganking and someone breaking rules back in 2014 when only real communication during battle was through battletag and hoping the other person noticed your friend request in time.
But then I look at the most recent campaign drama and a lot of it is enhanced by discord where it acted as a secondary forum thread sans moderation. 
Wasn’t the recent Silverpine campaign without a Discord chat though?
Also yeah, Discord would help a lot with communication, but sadly there’s also people inside who love to go off the rails and ruin it for everybody. I don’t think it’s reasonable for any campaign host to also moderate Discords, that’s just too much work.
Yet if you ban someone, there’s suddenly drama and guilds pulling out. ![:disappointed:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/disappointed.png?v=6" ":disappointed:")
But yes, you’d expect communication to be great in 2k19, but some campaign hosts are unable to do so. For some reason.
Magic beer comes to mind.
The recent silverpine campaign was with a discord for GM’s +1 officer and individuals only. Honestly should just have been for everyone.
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Discord seems to be used to cheat more than ever. I’ve noticed a trend where splinter groups make “secret” Discords to plan away from the prying eyes of organisers or the enemy faction out of fear of metagaming. Which is a reasonable fear, but it throws organisers and enemy players through a loop if they whip out a battle plan that seems like it came out of thin air and the organisers can’t do anything to facilitate it, and the enemy players get frustrated and ask “What the hell just happened?” with the organisers unable to give a sufficient explanation. Leading to yet more arguments.
“Hammerfall is now under siege”
“Okay, can we try and break it?”
“No”
“Well alright but are the other guys going to actually RP it out and camp outside our base?”
“No”
“Can anyone try and leave?”
“No”
"So how long is this going to last?
“Two weeks”
“But isn’t that the rest of the campaign?”
“No. Now excuse us while we go auto-win every fight in the region now.”
“Wat”
And this is usually where IMO communication issues come from.
Some GMs are really slow/bad with communication themselves, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the same ones who sign up as 15 ppl coming, and in reality it’s 5.
edit: also someone pls tell me what’s the magic beer thing
Years and years back Alliance won a magic beer buff of some kind. This was eons ago so my memory is fuzzy but as far as I recall, Horde weren’t even made aware of it. I can’t recall the actual implications of this “buff” but I imagine it had something to do with permitting Alliance players to wear stronger gear.
The absurdity of the premise coupled with the frustration it caused (Among other issues in the same campaign) stuck with people though.
I 'member being sieged in Hammerfall. Very little fun was had and the imp sent outside to scout basically had a tactical nuke dropped on it.
what in ten characters lol
I 'member my group at the time caught wind of this OOCly before it happened. Our guild and a few others decided to go hunting juuust before the siege would lock most of the Horde in one place.
“Oh no it’s under siege welp let’s go home”
We ended up having a LOTR style journey to get back to Kalimdor. Ended up meeting fellow “deserters” along the way.
My version of the legend had it be a supply caravan escort that somehow gave Alliance a score advantage to win without Horde knowing to act to stop it.