Eliot’s article about World of Warcraft’s 20th anniversary festivities reminded me of something dumb I loved to do back in the olden days of WoW: the Hillsbrad standoff – though we just called it Southshore. Long before WoW ever had battlegrounds (but after the honor system went in), the players on WoW’s PvP servers would engage in these long, pointless battles in Hillsbrad, basically lining up in two fronts and trying to goad the enemy into overextending long enough to be picked off. It was honestly extremely stupid, but hot damn it was also so much fun.
I want to talk about pointless PvP today, so hear me out. A lot of MMOs cleave to either the side of completely unstructured gankbox PvP or the side of overstructured arenas or battlegrounds. Southshore was neither; it was one of those organic, truly dynamic things that spring up from the cracks in the game’s design, and part of the reason it was fun was that it was neither instant three-on-one death (like a gankbox) nor overbuilt to funnel players into a gamified sports arena (which Blizzard did later, thereby sucking the life out of it). It was just dumb fun, the shitposting of PvP.
Surely WoW isn’t alone in this. Which MMORPGs would you say have similarly pointless – but fun – PvP?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
