Where the Grin has Gone & The State of Turtle WPvP

[Pogopogo]

IMPORTANT NOTE: The content below is the thoughts and opinions of me, Pogo’pogo as an individual and not the official opinion of BTG as an organization.

This is a discussion on the state of RP-WPvP on TurtleWoW, and an explanation to where <Blacktooth Grin> has gone.

The historic Turtle developer response to WPvP has always been muddied. While some actively encourage and support ‘harebrained zuggery’ and what it brings to the server, others seem to want to stem any potential PvP completely. This lack of cohesion is seen in the game environment, and has impacted Turtle’s PvP mechanics in unusual and ultimately unsatisfactory ways.

The recent mechanical and policy changes regarding PvP world encounters are reductive and incredibly damaging to any semblance of health TurtleWoW’s WPvP scene had. I am speaking specifically of guard buffs, and the vague and poorly defined ‘anti-griefing’ server rules.

They will not limit griefing, as classes such as rogue will still be able to ambush or sapper vulnerable targets, and casting classes can safe spot in areas such as the Goldshire inn roof and the Crossroads inn roof, but it does irreparably limit the ability to engage in town style seiges during WPvP.

The original designers of the game already had a mechanic to dissuade tactless zugging. Civilian mechanics. Civilians function in two ways. First, killing them accrues DHKs, which directly and immediately impacts honor rank. Second, a civilian near to a hostile player will spawn one guard for every hostile player in their vicinity. This mechanic both dissuades griefing and provides a fun challenge to coordinated WPvP groups.

If players are concerned about or offended by the idea of hostile player engagement in the world, they should not take nor feel incentivized to take on voluntary world flagging.

Similarly, the unprecedented prevalence of ‘bluewalling’, that is, the ability for unflagged non War Glyphed players to roam the world invulnerable looking for people to gank is incredibly damaging to the health of WPvP and is ripe for abuse, and has been abused. Some specific examples that come to mind are: Hannibal the former tent ganker, who would simply wait while unflagged for flagged players to come rest their laurels at the tents, kill them, and then hide till his flag would fall off. Alliance 60’s that hunt War Glyphed HC players while bluewalled using the /who system, turning an already incredibly difficult challenge into a near impossible task with no way of dissuading or combating these hostile players before the damage is already wrought, and finally the awkwardness that was large scale WPvP clashes due to bluewalling. This is something we have tried to bring attention in the past but with no fix nor desire to fix in sight simply accepted as another unsavory quirk of the server.

As things are now, Turtle’s PvP mechanics negatively impact both PvP and non-PvP players.

At the beginning, things were good. Turtle wasn’t as big as what we had become used to but there was fight to be had. Coordination and active interest in alliance wanting to fight and defend against us and siege Stonard for revenge was ample. The swamp was full of marks.

Soon there was no one left to fight us RP wise or PvP wise, and the alliance RP scene in general fell into disrepair outside of LPL. With the changes to both PvP mechanics, the influx of non-RP players, and the changes in reporting, ‘mandatory’ RP-PvP encounters with Grin in the swamp went from cheeky hostile RP urging an RP-PvP response to our members being harassed and reported for respectable world activity by players volunteering to play flagged (we have very strict rules about how we engage in WPvP- the vast majority of guilds on a normal PvP server would never be as cordial).

Turtle has many excellent things to offer. We miss our hammocks in Little Hordemar. We miss hosting big GM assisted events. We miss our Ogre Gol’goil. But Blacktooth Grin cannot exist without the gift of war. A BTG with no teeth at all is a sorry shell of itself. As things are now, there is no future for us on Turtle.

I would urge the TurtleWoW team to consider how these forceful mechanical changes have impacted the greater world of the Azeroth, and deeply consider what you want to see from the glyph of war. If you do not desire a thriving WPvP scene and all the tandem thrills and headaches that come with it, then remove it. As things are now no one is happy, zugger or grasshugger. If you do want to encourage this style of game interaction, then some thought needs to be put into changing the mechanics in ways that are additive, not reductive.

With the server progression locked at Naxx, WPvP has some of the best replay value for ‘completed characters’ and could be a great boon to the longevity of Turtle in general if engaged in fun and creative ways. Simply put: fight is never boring.

We wanted badly to make Turtle our permanent home. BTG has been zugging for 16 real years now and was excited for a place that suited all of our needs as avid Warcraft fans without the pitfalls of a ‘small indie company'. But it seems it was not to be.

Currently, BTG is resuming its campaign on the official classic realm of Grobbulus-US and will be making havoc there with the launch of wrath. We will continue our campaign for approximately 3 months post launch before discussing a potential return to Turtle. The main reason behind our exodus is excitement about the wpvp opportunities during that initial launch and leveling surge, and general hype among grin membership regarding the expansion in general. It is important to make it clear that the state of PvP on TurtleWoW was not the deciding factor in the decision to continue the Grobb campaign.

Already we have seen a massive increase in interguild activity and engagement, and there has been more than enough community RP and WPvP to sate our needs. Maybe one day we will return to our home in Little Hordemar and rest our laurels there among the honking toads and crackling torches. But for now, the turtle mul will know peace as our cry of ‘THOK MOG THOK’ is called only in distant worlds.

Farewell for now mortals, and don’t forget to Fear the Grin.

Edits: Made some edits to clarify that 1: this is my personal take. I am not the Regag. & 2: This is probably not goodbye forever! We don’t currently plan to -stay- on Grobb. But here is hoping for a world worth returning to when our Wrath Campaign ends.

[Jambiya]

Walk good troll bruddah. o7

[Gantulga]

Similarly, the unprecedented prevalence of ‘bluewalling’, that is, the ability for unflagged non War Glyphed players to roam the world invulnerable looking for people to gank is incredibly damaging to the health of WPvP and is ripe for abuse, and has been abused.

It boggles my mind how nothing was ever done about something so absurd and abusive yet we got the nonsense, knee-jerk reaction changes like buffing guards and flooding all low level hubs with them.
Whenever you bring up the griefing of Warmoders through the /pvp flag abuse to the community, you're met with vitriol and excuses, as if that's something commendable and perfectly fine.

There's another recent change which has been damaging to WPvP: not leaving a cross-faction group when engaging in PvP. This means that you can stay grouped with somebody of the opposite faction and just heal them or get healed with no repercussions.

[Bellybutton]

Zamba here, it feels bad to see the Grin leave man. With the current state of world-PvP, RP, and the general public community of Turtle WoW, and with most of the Grin taking off to WoTLK I've been playing Turtle less and less, or just leveling hardcore characters.

While I wholly understand that Turtle is not a PvP server (I've been on Turtle since 2018, years before Warmode was added), and was completely skeptical and defensive for the small RP community when Turtle added Warmode and more PvP features, coming to RP-PvP with the Grin and incorporating RP into world PvP in general was some of the most fun I've had in WoW in years, it brought me back to memories of organized RP PvP in retail TBC and retail WOTLK.

The thing is, Turtle added PvP features, and regardless if you're for PvP or anti-PvP, the Turtle developers have chosen to make PvP one of the forefront features of the server by adding Warmode and attracting large swathes of players who would rather play with a PvP ruleset than a PvE ruleset. As it stands right now, Turtle is both trying to be a PvE and a PvP server at the same time, and pander to two completely different audiences who want completely different experiences from World of Warcraft, and the interests of the PvE crowd and the interest of the PvP crowd often inhibit the other side and effect their gameplay or social experience in negative ways, and a lot of the changes and restrictions that Turtle places to pander to both crowds actively harms RP-PvPers the most.

Turtle in the past, and still largely does, advertise itself as a PvE server. A lot of the PvE crowd are older players who've been on the server longer than the PvP crowd. Some newer, PvP-oriented may call them carebears or just tell them not to flag, but the issue stems from the massive changes to the general community and overall vibe that bringing PvP players en masse allowed. Even if you're not being griefed (because you're not flagged), you constantly have to bear witness to PvP drama in world chat from fragile people crying about being ganked despite being flagged, taunting from posturing tryhards in public chat channels, watching hubs in the open world where both factions used to come, talk, RP and trade turning into a warzone/gankfests, and all sorts of other drama that didn't exist prior to Warmode, not to mention the nature of PvP tends to attract lots of players who use it as an excuse to grief players in various ways even if the players in question aren't PvP-flagged.

And then there's the people, like The Blacktooth Grin, me and a few other guilds and lone wolves, who just genuinely enjoy open world PvP as it was intended to be; No intentional griefing, no corpse camping, just PvP flagged players attacking each other. Of course, one side will always be disadvantaged in a PvP encounter, that's just the nature of WoW. Many of us (Grin, I) put a roleplay flare into our PvP. While I applaud attempts to protect non-flagged PvErs, and non-flagged hardcores by being from being tricked, bugged or exploited into unwanted PvP by bad actors and griefers, a lot of these things Turtle has added to protect these people have unintentionally had terrible consequences on people who just genuinely enjoy open-world PvP, and hurts RP-PvPers the most.

The lack of clarity on the very vague griefing rules, the difficulty of enforcing rules due to the dramatic increase in population, and the shift in community on Turtle WoW, the existence of blue walling, the well-intentioned but misguided protections and changes to Guards and PvP systems, and people who just use Warmode for the exp buff and whine about PvP happening to them, has led to a very toxic environment that's hostile towards open-world PvPers and organized RP-PvP events where you get hurled slurs, people threatening to report you for griefing, get accused of pretending to roleplay so you don't get banned, and then getting swarmed by 10+ people of the opposite faction who don't even flag PvP until they're ready to attack you.

[Razzz]

My guess is that the Turtle bosses are having to deal with such a sudden increase in population that they're having to wing it when it comes to what works and what doesn't when dealing with a louder, rougher community that is sadly commonplace for Blizzard and other p servers.
I haven't had to deal with it so badly since I'm purely pve so all I had to do was to /leave world and all has been well for the vast majority of my time.
It's a shame to hear that it's negatively affected one of the coolest guilds in the game to the point that they had to jump ship. :<

[Zangatsu]

Bye! Don't come back!

[Pistol]

A shame to see you guys go but I understand. Things have changed a lot here from a year ago.

[Dasenel]

I understand what you mean and even can accept some of the statements but wpvp in classic wotlk? Really? Wintergrasp doens't count

[Geojak]

Pls revert the guard buffs, they were rly unnecessary imo

[Snakeman]

I've been on Turtle for almost a year now - it would have been September or October last year that I rolled my first toon. I was part of the crowd who convinced Grin to try out Turtle (in spite of the lack of mandatory flagging) when we were itching for something to play after we quit Classic. I love this server and its philosophy, and I really do genuinely think the devs have the right vision of what vanilla WoW is meant to be... But I just can't bring myself to play right now. I miss all of the custom content so much in Wrath and Grin not wearing Blackrock and forest troll NPC skins hurts my soul, but it has to be done, for all the reasons Pogo and Zamba listed and more.

Patrol attendance generally had been dropping recently, which was never a problem (a week before class changes we succesfully held the Stormwind mage tower with five) until the guard buffs... At that point it became almost impossible to deal with any kind of actual PvP we got attacking cities because we were too busy PvEing against the borderline 60 elite guards. It just strips all of the fun out of city sieges.

Another point I feel is imperative to make here is that civilian mechanics don't actually work correctly on this server. They give dishonourable kills, yes, but the actual guard spawns have been buggy for months. I feel that if this were fixed and made blizzlike (or at least Classic-like) it would stop at least lowbies from ganking low level hardcore toons. Grin, of course, has its own strategies to deal with civilian guard spawns, but I haven't heard of many other guilds who employ the same mechanics, or even know how civilians work. (I'm not 100% versed in how it works either but I'm sure one of our number would be happy to help; civilian presence really helps to keep our zugging discipline sharp haha)

Classic is about the last place I want to be right now, and I much prefer the simplicity of Vanilla, but as Pogo mentioned, it is simply impossible for the Grin to exist as it is meant to without being able to raze towns and drum up a fight in response. War Mode absolutely helped to sate this, but at the end of the day, we felt forced to move away from a place many of us had called home due to a decreasing ability to do what the guild has essentially been hard-coded to do since the beginning.

Actually, while I'm here, change out the XP bonus on War Mode for, like, the ability to gain XP from battlegrounds or extra BG faction rep or something. Something that's still beneficial while levelling but is geared towards PvP players rather than making people feel forced to take the PvP flag so they can level to 60 faster. Faster levelling goes against the entire ideal of "Turtle" WoW, there's no question about it.

[Carbisari]

Ah damn, that sucks! I've been leveling a Hardcore character and have been looking forward to joining in on some Horde RP-PvP; always a real shame when such an established community dissolves.

[Snakeman]

I understand what you mean and even can accept some of the statements but wpvp in classic wotlk? Really? Wintergrasp doens't count turtle_tongue_head

Also, forgot to reply to this in my other post, but please don't just believe everything you see on Reddit. As it so happens, before we came to Turtle, Grin was rolling on Grobbulus, which remains one of the only English-speaking PvP servers (and the only RP-PvP server left in the whole of Classic) that isn't 99% skewed to one faction. We've had a plethora of spontaneous world PvP engagement so far, though layering makes responding to people attacking our home a little more difficult than I'd like lol

[Gantulga]

though layering makes responding to people attacking our home a little more difficult than I'd like lol

They still haven't removed that nonsense? Astonishing.

[Stoneguardian]

Bye! Don't come back!

I can see why you said this considering how many times I saw you get obliterated by them.

Blacktooth Grin was the best thing to happen to this server by far. What entertainment!

Devs, you had better take pause and reconsider some of your decisions lately. I saw you using BTG screenshots to advertise how cool the rp community is on your server several times, yet you make sweeping changes that only make wpvp tedious.

Why? Who are you protecting but people who should be unflagged to begin with? BTG brought spice to this server and you did them dirty. For shame. Either make this a pve server, remove warmode and call it a day or let wpvpers do their thing without your obnoxious changes to guard hp and spawn rates. They're in a pitiful state right now.

[Shirazen]

Hello! I'd love to share how I feel Warmode is a negative thing for the server's overall PvP and even PvE Leveling scene currently.

As someone who never really got into battlegrounds for my PvP fix and gravitated to WPvP and more Dark Souls-ian invasion-like spontaneous ganking, I can see tons of issues with how things like Warmode are implemented that create a bad divide between people who actually want to zug, and those who simply don't want to take their licks in return for the XP bonus.

If someone wants to fight? They should have a RED name. If they DON'T, they should have a BLUE name. Seems simple enough. But, that doesn't seem to be the case on Turtle. I can see someone being upset they got ganked due to an accidental flag on a guard, or perhaps flagging by healing a Warmode'd player, but as it stands so many people who take Warmode only do so for the incentives for XP, and not for the battle.

Being ganked repeatedly and corpse-camped is lame. Corpse-camping someone who can barely fight back is lame. I know that the old "Warmode is a Choice" adage applies, but at the end of the day, Grin wants the PvP to be fun for all parties involved.

We LOVE the reciprocation of a good battle, but when the majority of people are flagged and have no intent for actual combat, resulting in a lot of complaints about ganking and PvP griefing, BOTH sides lose. As it stands, the buffing of guards and supposed removal of Civilian tags [Citation Needed*] on enemies are changes that seem dissonant from one another, to me at least. The way things are implemented isn't going to stop generic camping/tent bombing regardless.

I'd know, because the guard buffs have done basically nothing to stop me from throwing Thorium Grenades into the Goldshire tents on a whim, or simply killing people in places where guards aren't helping.

There's room for discussion and sharing opinions here I think could help as things go on. I've had the idea of Warmode offering different things other than XP: a bonus to honor gained for HKs in the open world, perhaps? Maybe ~very~ minor %XP for Honorable Kills specifically - with harsh diminishing returns, so as not to be abused? XP in BGs? Something that players interested in the battle could really benefit from!

*** I've heard a few times during voice calls, "Didn't this guy used to be a civvie?" when referring to certain NPCs around the world. Unsure how accurate this may be, and I don't want to spread misinformation, but if I recall there are some Civilians who've had their tag removed, and there are numerous other issues with the Civilian mechanic that could aid world-defense without making the guards insanely powerful

[Gantulga]

Civilian NPCs never did anything except discourage city raids. They should be gone.

[Bellybutton]

Maybe ~very~ minor %XP for Honorable Kills specifically

That's actually a great idea that I think could be implemented to Warmode.
Warmode permanently flags you for PvP like it already does, but remove the passive 30% experience gain, and instead replace it so that killing players instead gives you experience, like how killing a mob does.

Killing players whose level is gray to you would grant ZERO experience.
Killing players whose level is green to you would grant some experience, but not a substantial bit, it would be faster to grind mobs than gank green players.
Killing players whose level is yellow to you would grant a nice bit of experience. More than your average yellow mob, maybe a quarter of a bar.
Killing players whose level is orange to you would grant you a large amount of experience, possibly half a bar's worth of experience.
Killing players whose level is red to you would grant three quarters of a bar's worth of experience.
Killing players whose level is ?? to you would grant ZERO experience.

There would be a cooldown or something that once you kill a player, you can still kill them, but you cannot get experience from that specific player again until maybe 30 minutes to an hour passes to make it harder for exploiting this system to speed level or to discourage camping.

It would encourage people in Warmode to actually PvP, while also replacing the 30% exp boost with a way to gain experience that's tied to PvP. People would see another flagged player and WANT to kill them because they get a sizeable exp gain. Likewise, it also ensures that the only people in Warmode are people that want to PvP

[Carbisari]

The HKs = XP idea sounds real fun to me, actually! Correct leveraging of extrinsic motivation would definitely go a long way towards getting the desired player actions/reactions going.

[Bellybutton]

Adding thoughts to my previous post.
To appease people who insist on having the 30% exp gain, make 30% exp gain it's own separate glyph disconnected from Warmode or PvP. Glyph of Rapidity, or Glyph of the Hare.
The catch however, is that in order to unlock this glyph, you must already have a level 60 character on that account. I feel that's a reasonable trade-off for people who want to level fast. You get an exp boost separate from a PvP mode, but you need to have already committed and leveled a character to 60 to unlock it for alts; You've already experienced the leveling process at it's mostly intended pacing, so now you have the option to increase your exp gain by 30% on your alts.
Maybe increase the exp gain to 50% since we'd be locking the glyph behind already reaching level 60 on one character.

[Pogopogo]

Adding thoughts to my previous post.
To appease people who insist on having the 30% exp gain, make 30% exp gain it's own separate glyph disconnected from Warmode or PvP. Glyph of Rapidity, or Glyph of the Hare.
The catch however, is that in order to unlock this glyph, you must already have a level 60 character on that account. I feel that's a reasonable trade-off for people who want to level fast. You get an exp boost separate from a PvP mode, but you need to have already committed and leveled a character to 60 to unlock it for alts; You've already experienced the leveling process at it's mostly intended pacing, so now you have the option to increase your exp gain by 30% on your alts.
Maybe increase the exp gain to 50% since we'd be locking the glyph behind already reaching level 60 on one character.

This is a really good idea and in line with turtle’s original ‘take it slow, smell the roses’ nature as advertised in its media.

[Mac]

That's actually a great idea that I think could be implemented to Warmode.
Warmode permanently flags you for PvP like it already does, but remove the passive 30% experience gain, and instead replace it so that killing players instead gives you experience, like how killing a mob does.

Killing players whose level is gray to you would grant ZERO experience.
Killing players whose level is green to you would grant some experience, but not a substantial bit, it would be faster to grind mobs than gank green players.
Killing players whose level is yellow to you would grant a nice bit of experience. More than your average yellow mob, maybe a quarter of a bar.
Killing players whose level is orange to you would grant you a large amount of experience, possibly half a bar's worth of experience.
Killing players whose level is red to you would grant three quarters of a bar's worth of experience.
Killing players whose level is ?? to you would grant ZERO experience.

There would be a cooldown or something that once you kill a player, you can still kill them, but you cannot get experience from that specific player again until maybe 30 minutes to an hour passes to make it harder for exploiting this system to speed level or to discourage camping.

It would encourage people in Warmode to actually PvP, while also replacing the 30% exp boost with a way to gain experience that's tied to PvP. People would see another flagged player and WANT to kill them because they get a sizeable exp gain. Likewise, it also ensures that the only people in Warmode are people that want to PvP

Adding thoughts to my previous post.
To appease people who insist on having the 30% exp gain, make 30% exp gain it's own separate glyph disconnected from Warmode or PvP. Glyph of Rapidity, or Glyph of the Hare.
The catch however, is that in order to unlock this glyph, you must already have a level 60 character on that account. I feel that's a reasonable trade-off for people who want to level fast. You get an exp boost separate from a PvP mode, but you need to have already committed and leveled a character to 60 to unlock it for alts; You've already experienced the leveling process at it's mostly intended pacing, so now you have the option to increase your exp gain by 30% on your alts.
Maybe increase the exp gain to 50% since we'd be locking the glyph behind already reaching level 60 on one character.

I love both of these ideas and really wish they were implemented.

[Jambiya]

+1

[Thol]

War Mode is currently used as a leveling/rabbit mode because of the +30% XP. It's used while leveling then disabled forever.

There's also the issue of AV, a mean of getting PvP rewards through a mostly PVE activity. Imo AV should be removed and WPvP encouraged instead. WPvP can be so much more than mindless ganking, especially on a RP server. It can breathe life into the overworld.

I feel like the only way to make it work would be to only allow War Mode players to interact with each others, this would solve flagging issues, as a lot of players claim they got flagged unknowingly and it would also prevent bluewalling. Most griefers in low levels zones currently don't even use War Mode they /pvp off if a 60 comes for them. I'm not sure HC+WM should even be allowed, it's just a meme at this point.

There would then be 2 players type:

• War Mode Off player: can't attack other players, heal or buff a war mode player of both factions

• War Mode On player: can only attack other War Mode players of the opposite faction, can buff or heal War Mode Off players of both factions

You will tell me, then they can't do dungeons or raids together, I would propose being able to toggle War Mode On/Off in SW and Orgrimmar every 2 hours, like that you can go do your dungeon or raid with other War Mode Off players when needed.

Only War Mode On players would be able to get honor from PvP objectives in the overworld like the ones in Eastern plaguelands and Silithus, I would hope more similar objectives would be added in other zones.
Imagine, Southshore vs Tarren Mill or Astranaar vs Xroads

[Snakeman]

Adding thoughts to my previous post.
To appease people who insist on having the 30% exp gain, make 30% exp gain it's own separate glyph disconnected from Warmode or PvP. Glyph of Rapidity, or Glyph of the Hare.
The catch however, is that in order to unlock this glyph, you must already have a level 60 character on that account. I feel that's a reasonable trade-off for people who want to level fast. You get an exp boost separate from a PvP mode, but you need to have already committed and leveled a character to 60 to unlock it for alts; You've already experienced the leveling process at it's mostly intended pacing, so now you have the option to increase your exp gain by 30% on your alts.
Maybe increase the exp gain to 50% since we'd be locking the glyph behind already reaching level 60 on one character.

This is a really good idea and in line with turtle’s original ‘take it slow, smell the roses’ nature as advertised in its media.

Agree, really good compromise imo. A grievance I've always had with WoW (it's very uniquely WoW now too; FFXIV allows you to do eveything on one character where WoW requires you level a new character for each class) is the amount of time it takes to level alts even when you already have a toon at 60, and this would alleviate a lot of the issue for me.

[Markuis]

War Mode is currently used as a leveling/rabbit mode because of the +30% XP. It's used while leveling then disabled forever.

There's also the issue of AV, a mean of getting PvP rewards through a mostly PVE activity. Imo AV should be removed and WPvP encouraged instead. WPvP can be so much more than mindless ganking, especially on a RP server. It can breathe life into the overworld.

I feel like the only way to make it work would be to only allow War Mode players to interact with each others, this would solve flagging issues, as a lot of players claim they got flagged unknowingly and it would also prevent bluewalling. Most griefers in low levels zones currently don't even use War Mode they /pvp off if a 60 comes for them. I'm not sure HC+WM should even be allowed, it's just a meme at this point.

There would then be 2 players type:

• War Mode Off player: can't attack other players, heal or buff a war mode player of both factions

• War Mode On player: can only attack other War Mode players of the opposite faction, can buff or heal War Mode Off players of both factions

You will tell me, then they can't do dungeons or raids together, I would propose being able to toggle War Mode On/Off in SW and Orgrimmar every 2 hours, like that you can go do your dungeon or raid with other War Mode Off players when needed.

Only War Mode On players would be able to get honor from PvP objectives in the overworld like the ones in Eastern plaguelands and Silithus, I would hope more similar objectives would be added in other zones.
Imagine, Southshore vs Tarren Mill or Astranaar vs Xroads

However that would divide even more the players. There is already HC/normal, that would add yet another division.

[Geojak]

How about this warmode rework.

1. Remove the exp bonus
2. Make it unlimited times toggleable
3. If you got warmode enabled at start of pvp week and never turned it off, you get a 30% honour bonus

A pvp reward for a pvp bonus.
Meaning if you want to rank faster, you have to accept world pvp risks.

Disadvantage, no real reason to choose this during leveling until you start seriously ranking.
I personally find world pvp during leveling pure cancer.
The only time World pvp can be interesting is raid vs raid in my opinion inside nlblackrock mountain or world bosses. But not everyone likes this and you won't have half a raid pvp and another half is pve, so raid will force the pvpers to turn it off to not get grieved.
So I don't rly see how warm mode can rly work here.. And that is okay to me

[Gantulga]

They should also fix the /pvp flag abuse WM players are subjected to.

Perhaps being able to only /pvp flag yourself in the main city and a toggle to disable being able to attack players and to heal/buff flagged allies would work.
There's also a new abuse case where grouped players can heal and buff opposite faction, PvP flagged players with impunity.

[Magina]

Sad to hear, but very understandable.
Even as someone who only plays HC, BTG was enjoyable to have around. It was fun to see your RP interactions in game, as well as artwork and such shared on discord.

[Feroli]

I agree with this wholeheartedly, as someone who mostly plays HC and never did PvP, BTG had actually made me very interested in giving WPvP a good go because of the RP rules which were very up my alley.

I personally believe there needs to be a choice made whether the server is PvP or PvE, or RP in general, as we’ve seen having them co-exist is just extremely difficult. I can only speak as a HC player but I do genuinely feel for the people who just enjoy normal WPvP as you can’t just play the game how you want without the interference of others and it does suck that any attempt to discuss the possibility of a second server either gets dismissed or met with hostility accusing you of wanting to divide the community.

It sucks to see you guys go, I loved watching general chat in a neutral zone to see if there were any shenanigans happening and I was interested to join on my immortal rogue when (if) I came back to the server, but it’s fully understandable given the way things are rn and I hope you guys have a blast in WotLK :3

[Tenant]

That's actually a great idea that I think could be implemented to Warmode.
Warmode permanently flags you for PvP like it already does, but remove the passive 30% experience gain, and instead replace it so that killing players instead gives you experience, like how killing a mob does.

Killing players whose level is gray to you would grant ZERO experience.
Killing players whose level is green to you would grant some experience, but not a substantial bit, it would be faster to grind mobs than gank green players.
Killing players whose level is yellow to you would grant a nice bit of experience. More than your average yellow mob, maybe a quarter of a bar.
Killing players whose level is orange to you would grant you a large amount of experience, possibly half a bar's worth of experience.
Killing players whose level is red to you would grant three quarters of a bar's worth of experience.
Killing players whose level is ?? to you would grant ZERO experience.

There would be a cooldown or something that once you kill a player, you can still kill them, but you cannot get experience from that specific player again until maybe 30 minutes to an hour passes to make it harder for exploiting this system to speed level or to discourage camping.

It would encourage people in Warmode to actually PvP, while also replacing the 30% exp boost with a way to gain experience that's tied to PvP. People would see another flagged player and WANT to kill them because they get a sizeable exp gain. Likewise, it also ensures that the only people in Warmode are people that want to PvP

I mean...
There are other tweaks that I would apply, but the most important thing is that xp gained from warmode would be directly proportional to the time spent pvping.