I can’t resist the urge to speak my mind on the subject of Warhammer Online PvP Flagging in PvE Areas. For those unaware, Mythic released information in a Beta Update detailing that they are currently working on a PvP flagging system. Read the article if you want what I have to say to make any sense. Also read James Nichols response to many of the players concerned about flagging. Also please know that I am very passionate when it comes to realm pride and RvR.
WAR is Everywhere – now it’s really going to be everywhere in ways I thought only imaginable in the Warcraft Universe. PvP flagging, by definition the manual enabling of your character to be attacked, will be making its way into the PvE areas. First let me clarify my understanding of how I thought WAR was going to handle regions. I thought that PvE and PvP were completely separate as they were in DAOC. I read somewhere that Games Workshop told Mythic that there were to be no neutral areas. My understanding of Warhammer lore suggests that if an Orc saw a Dwarf he would go to any lengths to see that Dwarf’s head on a pike.
Apparently in Warhammer Online enemies will PvE in the some of the same areas. In these areas in order to fight the enemy you must manually enable your PvP flag. I guess I completely misunderstood the whole “WAR is Everywhere” slogan. Mythic meant that “Hey look, War is even in PvE regions, hehe! Flag and let’s fight!”. I thought it meant “If I see you, I can kill you”. In my mind, and maybe in yours, part of what made Warhammer the perfect IP for this game was that these races have a true hatred for each other. There exists a malevolence for the enemy. Apparently that will be disregarded as my Greenskin Orc tromps around killing bears next to a Dwarf who won’t flag.
I’m trying to understand the reasoning behind this flagging system. The players in the PvE regions are there to PvE. If they wanted to RvR they would cross over into a RvR region. Why then should someone interested in RvR ever want to cross over in to an enemies PvE area? I can think of only one reason and that would be because there is not enough RvR going on in the RvR areas. If this is the case then it’s no wonder the beta servers are shut down. If it’s not the reason then the players wishing to RvR are entering the PvE areas with one goal in mind – Ganking. Why, oh why, would I ever enable my PvP flag if I am PvE’ing? I can’t imagine the results being anything but awkward.
I have for some time been very much opposed to the crowd of players saying that WAR is another WoW clone. In my mind I built WAR up to be like DAOC where realm pride and RvR meant everything – absolutely everything. Now a tiny little part of me is slightly perturbed that WAR is in fact having a little too much in common with WoW. I don’t like it when I misunderstand and that’s exactly what has apparently happened. But I’m not alone, not by any means. The majority of WAR fans out there are also questioning this WoW Homeland PvE gameplay. It just plain sucks that I envisioned it differently. 
I still have hope that the community’s reaction to this information might change the minds of Mythic. If not then I am hoping it will be implemented in such a way that I can completely avoid all aspects and forms of this gameplay mechanic. I get and understand now that it’s never been cut and dry RvR here and PvE there but it’s no longer about the combining of PvE zones to serve both realms, it’s about the principle behind it.
In DAOC the solitude of your realm while PvEing created realm pride. You grew closer as a realm community and that made you fight harder to defend your lands. Please Mythic, stick with what we know works.
**EDIT**
I just had to add this. Mark Jacobs quote from 2005:
“Folks,
Consensual – Going into a dangerous area, going into enemy territory, etc. It does not mean getting somebody’s permission before killing them. That would be silly here.
Flagging – Not going to happen. I believe I’m actually the guy who used PvP flagging/switch for the first time (not sure on this though) back in ’85. If used properly, it can be quite useful. It doesn’t fit into WAR at all.
And I agree, evil should be more subtle than simply going up to a guy and killing him easily 5 times in a row because he’s level 1 and you’re level 4,999.
Mark”
October 19th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Holy crap, that bugs me too. T avoid players getting griefed (as that’s what this is obviously for), why not put NPC guard in place that are difficult to overtake? You know, like a bunch of people… not gankers, but a raid force coming to wreck havoc on the players.
Maybe this will apply to PvE servers, and PvP servers won’t require flagging. Again, like WoW, but at least it’s true to the motto that way.
Bogus.
October 19th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Yep it basically allows you the option now of flagging and taking out that dwarf that’s wandering around in the Greenskin zone. But it also means you might just want a nice of quiet questing or grinding, only to find a bunch of dwarves following you killing all the mobs you need, and/or trying to make you hit them to get flagged so they can kill you. OR, as you noted, they might actually help you for whatever reason. Clearly these things aren’t being done with an eye toward the RP reasons, for as you noted, these races HATE each other. They would never co-exist.
So essentially some folks will have to endure getting hassled trying to do PvE related content, while others will applaud that they can now flag themselves and attack that enemy in their zone (even outside the pvp portion). Others are already talking about being perma-flagged – they don’t mind getting randomly jumped at any time heh.
I’m just hoping there’s a bit more information and clarification coming. They definitely stirred the hornet’s nest on this one, and obviously their podcasts glossed over this aspect a bit too much as many people (myself included) made the same mistake. I essentially though that the enemy was sort of “fenced off” in the pvp section of the zone, so you were safe unless you went there. So at the higher tiers where the pvp is 90% of the zone, obviously there’s not a lot of space to be safe. What I had missed, which is the critical part, is that opposing realms can have quests in my zone they need to complete. That being the case, now I can choose to self-flag and kill them, whereas before I could not.
Will be interesting to see how the War team responds to this and explains it. Maybe we’ll feel better about it before it’s all over. I would say I’m moderatly concerned at this point, but still optimistic.
October 19th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
[...] The update has a small snippet of news from several of the different teams, including RvR, Public Quests, Items, Cities, and Combat & Careers. The one piece that has generated the most buzz, questions, concerns, and panic in some cases is the piece from the RvR team of “pvp flagging”. This was first brought to my attention by Keen with two different posts on the subject which are great. [...]
October 19th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
[...] The update has a small snippet of news from several of the different teams, including RvR, Public Quests, Items, Cities, and Combat & Careers. The one piece that has generated the most buzz, questions, concerns, and panic in some cases is the piece from the RvR team of “pvp flagging”. This was first brought to my attention by Keen with two different posts on the subject which are great. [...]
October 21st, 2007 at 1:10 pm
From playing there alpha build of the game a year ago youhand no control over your flag, only the game did, if you crossed the imaginary line your flag went on, a few secounds after you had re crossed that line it went off. The game controls all of it, you don’t get to.
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:25 am
well pvp flagging will just about put a nail in the coffin for me … guess they want the pve crowd and dont want to scare a big potential revenue source away from the game.
Personally I would like not to see the pvp flagging system, keep the starter home areas heavy guarded by npc’s and roaming patrols and the further you get away from them the more wild it becomes …
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
That is really surprising. I thought it was going to be all PvP.
Oh, well. WAR can never live up to all the baggage people have hung to it. WoW killer, best MMO ever, a new direction for a jaded market… I wish people would get realistic. WAR is just another game. Some people will play, others won’t; I hope it does well, but to think it will be all things to all people is unrealistic.
Fact is, true, all-the-time PvP doesn’t appeal to many people. Even on the WoW PvP servers, you do arenas, battlegrounds and so on — very tightly controlled PvP.
There’s going to be lots of people — maybe even the MAJORITY of the people — on WAR who don’t want to do the random ganking of pure PvP. And of course EA/Mythic will allow that sort of gameplay. They aren’t looking for Shadowbane or DAoC numbers. They’re going for WoW numbers.