Tear down the bluewall!

[Snakeman]

What it says on the tin, basically. :~)

I love War Mode and all of the hell it brings to this server, and I take the glyph on almost every character I make! But there is one serious, outlying problem I and a number of my friends and guildies have experienced in this prosperous, post-1.16 world:

Bluewalling.

It's all well and good to take War Mode if you want to attract world PvP to you - it's what it's there for! - but it doesn't really feel fair on the ones who choose to perma-flag when someone can walk right up to you, without flagging, and get a free opener on you. Part of the fun of wPvP (at least, in my opinion) is looking over your shoulder for the red name creeping up behind you, so you can stop or steal their opener instead, but when you can essentially RP walk up to someone, stealth at the last second and cheap shot them for free it doesn't really reflect the spirit of open-world PvP. Likewise, other classes are able to get full casts off from behind the bluewall that you can't interrupt or stop in any way - things like soul fire, pyroblast, aimed shot, etc., and this bothers me even more. What can you even do about that? How do you stop someone chasing you when you literally can't touch them?

A solution I've seen brought up (I forget who by) is to make all interactions against flagged players of the opposite faction work the same way they do on hardcore characters - players should need to manually flag (i.e. type /pvp into their chatbox) before being able to cast on someone of the opposite faction, and harmful spellcasts met with an "Invalid target" error. I doubt this is the only solution, and I encourage others to give their input on this issue! But, in its current state, I absolutely think being able to cast on someone in War Mode without first flagging for PvP is exploitative, and should be disallowed mechanically.

Please, don't just tell me to drop War Mode, or that it's a trap, or that I'm salty I got ganked a couple of times - I can deal with a couple of ganks. I have a level 60 I can log onto if it starts to properly bother me. I just really dislike the idea of someone being able to erase half of your health with literally zero consequence to themselves.

P.S. also, much smaller issue I don't feel warrants a big bellyaching thread but pls make sky shadows tameable <\3 the highest level blue vulture being in desolace makes me sad every day

Edit 04/04/22: edited topic title to b e more snappy and relevant to the post i made in here a couple of days ago

[Pistol]

I think is a great idea and I imagine this would be beneficial for more accident prone non-pvpers worried about misclicking or whatever.

[Riverkill]

This is a really good idea, honestly. It would also benefit those who don't wish to engage in pvp by preventing accidental flagging via accidental right clicks or AOE damage.

[Mac]

Yes, this is a good idea.

[Ugoboom]

I was saying this from day one. You cannot mix pve and pvp servers together, else you make people expecting the pvp server experience have an even worse time.

Your suggestion kinda sucks too. People will just make a macro that does /pvp /cast Kidney Shot or whatever. It'll only stop precasted pyros and other spells, except instead they'll do /pvp /cast Polymorph and then do the pyro pom pyro. Or a lock with fear. Reacting to a 1.5 cast especially in the middle of your pull is not especially easy.

So yeah you are still at a strong disadvantage compared to a real pvp server. I just don't see a way to fix it properly.

[Snakeman]

I was saying this from day one. You cannot mix pve and pvp servers together, else you make people expecting the pvp server experience have an even worse time.

Your suggestion kinda sucks too. People will just make a macro that does /pvp /cast Kidney Shot or whatever. It'll only stop precasted pyros and other spells, except instead they'll do /pvp /cast Polymorph and then do the pyro pom pyro. Or a lock with fear. Reacting to a 1.5 cast especially in the middle of your pull is not especially easy.

So yeah you are still at a strong disadvantage compared to a real pvp server. I just don't see a way to fix it properly.

I've been thinking about it more in recent days, and I think my original preconception of War Mode from retail I had when it was brought up as something to be added to TWoW - i.e. allowing PvP flagging/deflagging ONLY in faction cities and not out in the world - is definitely a lot better than what I brought up in the op. Having to deal with entire bluewalled patrols of Alliance and being left with no option but to run away from them because they, by principle, will get the jump on us if we don't, is kinda depressing. Macroing is something that came to mind after I made this post, but if memory serves I made this quite late at night so I couldn't really be bothered to go back and acknowledge it at the time.

Like it or not, though, we kinda have to mix it up. As much as I'd love a separate PvP enabled Turtle WoW, with current population levels it will be incredibly difficult to maintain a healthy pop on both servers (if we can't even keep single-race RP guilds alive, how do we keep an entire RP-PvP realm alive?), not to even mention the costs of hosting and development for two separate realms. We already have enough differences from the vmangos base as it is that bugs are cropping up when the devs try to push fixes from the core, as evidenced by the recent attempt to make Elemental Focus proc in a blizzlike manner :\ Grin had members who tried out Darrowshire when that started out and loved the WPvP while levelling, but the server community itself was less than savoury, especially in relation to RP. And we all know the way Vanilla servers without any kind of fresh or new content go.

I would still like a glyph to perma PvP flag, though - just not with any kind of bonus if flagging in cities were to take on the 30% XP buff. Logging on for patrol and having to /pvp is too much for my smooth troll brain. :~)