I’m continuing to level my priest primarily through PvP, with a few quests thrown in here and there. She’s at 48 now. I’m hoping to get her to 50 before the weekend since I’ll be switching back to my death knight on Sunday for the holiday achievements (more on that next week).

I mentioned in my last PvP post that a lot of whining happens in chat during these games, with people telling everyone how much they suck. Horde always sucks according to these people, which cracks me up since if you play enough bg’s, you realize that it’s probably about even and depneds on the composition of the group. Besides the whining, I’ve noticed some other interesting behavior, some of which is quite detrimental to the group.

I’m going to use Arathi Basin as my main example, a bg where there are five bases to be captured. When a team holds a base, they receive resources. Whichever team gets to 1600 resources first, wins. When I play a bg, I think of myself as part of the group and try to look out for the group interests. In a good bg, most people are thinking this way. At the beginning of such groups, someone will often designate subgroups take on different tasks, so that everyone’s not running for the same area. If no one does this, I tend to follow a group to a particular area. And I generally check the map fairly frequently to see where people are. I ask where the opposing team is, etc.

The first behavior that bugs me is being afk (away from keyboard). If you do actually go afk, either by typing /afk or by not pressing any keys for a certain amount of time, you’ll be kicked out of the bg. But there are people who go hide in a corner, sucking up the experience and the honor without doing anything. These people can be reported as afk. However, all that does is send them a little note asking them if they’re afk and notifying them that they need to engage in combat or they will receive no honor. I’m not sure about experience. When I was investigating how this whole thing worked, I found out, too, that if you’re reported by enough people often enough, you can have your account banned for a few hours.

The problem with being afk is that it means your team is shorthanded. I was in a bg where there were two people afk and when there’s only 10 or so people playing, that can make a big difference. It got frustrating when those two people kept showing up again and again. I was doing the daily bg quest and need to win the bg in order to complete the quest (which gives significant experience). I reported them every time. One of them went out and fought and then died and stayed dead. Another holed up by the start point. I checked to see if they ever moved, and they didn’t and I reported them. A couple of other people noticed them, too, and reported them. But they still kept showing up, which made me think there were few consequences for their actions. This is a clear case of individual desires (xp and honor points) trumped the group desire. The sad thing is if they had participated normally, they would have been more likely to get more of what they, as individuals, wanted.

The other annoying behavior is when people go after bases that are hard to hold or solo a base. Each team, for example has a base near their starting point. Generally, these bases are captured immediately at the start of the game. While it’s true that it can be a good strategy to capture the opposing team’s nearby base, it’s hard to keep and you can lose valuable time and players by trying to keep it. The reason it’s hard to keep is that team players often spawn at the start point nearby, meaning there’s a constant flow of opposing players coming at you. Sometimes people will get bored and go after another base, just because, leaving a base unguarded or weakly guarded. Usually, it’s a suicide mission unless you get lucky and it’s unguarded. Usually, though, as soon as the announcement goes out that you’ve assaulted that base, the team comes swarming in and you die.

Despite some of this annoying behavior, I’m still having fun playing in bg’s. I’ve generally had more good groups than bad and I like the way it’s a limited amount of time. You’re in and out quite quickly, while quests and dungeons can take much longer periods of time. So it’s been a great way to take a quick break..