I'd like to propose to make the realm
RP-PvP and suggest some turtle-friendly features.
Making faction conflict more relevant isn't necessarily incompatible with the focus on the levelling (rather than endgame), on open world activities, immersion, warcraft lore, roleplaying, community, on the vanilla experience.
Personally, I plan to stay on the original realm, but
Slow and steady wil be something I'll definitely pick if I make a character there at one point with which I'll focus more on pvp.
Twink Characters:
I propose enchantments being applicable to +- their adequate level, instead of to any item, with new lower level enchants or low level equivalents, or there being some penalty (similar to how spell power coefficience is decreased by 3% each level below 20), in order to enhance the levelling as well as twink pvp experience. If overpowered enchants are a possibility, noone wants a nerf to their power, but if they are not included by basic, the content of that level bracket becomes much more relevant, and twinks will be adequately rewarded for their extra effort, they will appreciate more what their level offers and find it more rewarding to engage in pvp, at the same time they won't be nigh unbeatable by non-twinks. It'd be better for everyone.
Hardcore:
Unless there is a plan to open a hardcore realm in the future, it'd be interesting to involve the challenge in this brutal setting.
There could be hardcore-only arenas/battlegrounds, with 10x honor/rep reward to compensate for the risk, and hardcore-only rank titles.
A trinket called "Flag of Yielding" (with a white flag icon) that would allow the player to join a battleground with 1 death excused that kicks the player with a debuff and triggers the trinkets CD, and/or allow not dying against non-hardcore players and instead yield like in a duel, prompting the enemy to spare or kill, or after yielding apply a long lasting debuff.
Making
arenas rated would be definitely interesting, not only for max level, but for each level bracket, it would be in line with the non-max lvl focus of twow. The rewards could be thematically tied to the levelling zones of each bracket.
Open world non-instanced arenas;
Having an NPC to whom the participants talk, they receive an item/buff, and an invisible barrier appears in the designated area, and only players can go through who have that buff or item in the inventory, other players could be live spectators, they could bet gold on who will win between each other.
And there could be hardcore players doing arena where once killed the same happens as in duels, but at that moment the crowd would be prompted with a message whether to let live or allow to kill the hardcore participant, if majority chooses to allow to kill, the hardcore player enters into combat again, then it would depend on the opponent.
Also
pvp rewards that reduce the resist chance against higher level players would make sense, so the level difference doesn't play such a significant part in world pvp (for those that effort to decrease that difference).
Anything that is integrated in the open world is much more immersive than instanced gameplay, it enhances the roleplaying aspect of WoW. Open world activities are closer to the essence of Vanilla/Turtle WoW and Warcraft.
Open World PvP should be definitely encouraged.
Quests ment to encourage pvp, being seemlessly part of levelling quests, it would reduce the gap between the player and the world.
From lore perspective, an orc is an orc, whether controlled by an ai or a player.
Things like the use of an item on a player or an item looted from the corpse of a player, for example a head.
But anything that involves hostile NPCs can be applied on hostile players of someone from a specific rank, or race, or class.
Class specific quests, like rogue pickpocketing quest items from players, undead priest testing devouring plague on various races, paladin killing undead players etc.
There could be shared quests between factions that trigger an event, that would be automatically announced in the chat, the objective of one faction could be killing an NPC, simultanepusly of the other faction would be escorting it.
Or one side would try to steal an item/the other side protect an item.
Conquer something/while the other faction defends it.
Which brings me to a more advanced idea;
In the spirit of the foundation of the warcraft franchise (faction conflict, bases built, defended and destroyed, resources being tapped into etc.), there could be pvp events; attacks against any Horde or Alliance town, with adequate rewards, one could join the NPCs of their faction that are carrying out the attack or defense.
There could be repeatable quests ment to reach a collective objective - for example to fortify the towns, each player could contribute to reach the final cost (gold/materials) of for example building a (destroyable) watchtower that would shoot at attacking players, similar to the Warcraft 3 towers, different based on the race, constructing a building that trains and equips the NPCs (granting them buffs) or other collective costs inspired by Warcraft 3 gameplay.
Some buildings could be attacked and would need to be repaired.
Towns could be occupied and would need to be reconquered. It'd reduce the gap between players and NPCs, make the game feel much more alive and dynamic.
Professions would gain more significance.
Capital Cities would be like PvP raids, while Towns and Settlements would be like PvP dungeons.
The collective effort to upgrade the Towns/friendly NPCs, and attack/defend your factions settlements would incentivize socializing and would increase immersion. and bring more of Warcraft into WoW.
Tying together open world PvP, PvE and RP.
The warcraft base building/defense/conquest brought into WoW via town/city events/quests as mentioned above is quite an ambitious feature, to make it worth considering more, I'd like to contrast it with an even more ambitious one
that I believe would also fit very well on a rp-pvp server that is expected to have a high population;
An option to take on a role of hostile mobs in the world that are not necessarily affiliated with the horde/alliance:
New Non-Alliance/Horde Race: play as a Mob/NPC