I’ve played World of Warcraft before as I am an avid mmo enthusiast, and I found my experience comparable to getting raped in the anus by a pack of clowns; yes I paid a great sum of money for a game that I didn’t enjoy, but it was kind of funny. The paramount problem was the fact that once in contested territory, players will spare no expense to come and kill your character, and then camp you for hours on end. Really, it was a question of patience, as I’m sure everybody had similar experiences, but I wasn’t willing to pay 15 bucks a month for the privilege of having Billy Everyteen set up shop and hate 3 hours of me. My friends weren’t willing to switch servers so I quit. Now we role on a PvE server, Moonrunner, and I have never been happier. I see an alliance guy running around every once in a while, but it’s alright because now he can’t gank me when I don’t want him to, which is always, so I’m never being ganked. If people want to go do PvP, they can run over to the battlegrounds and get some honor or whatever makes them feel good. I think this should have been done in the first place, but it brings up the larger issue of the tension of what could happen rather than what will. I appreciate why the contested areas were put in, certainly it’s a great idea, but Blizzard never seemed to think it through. My experience in Ashenvale was largely about 10 minutes of getting things done, and then about a half hour of getting corpse camped by the pain monsters. There really wasn’t a way to progress without moving into those territories, so suffice to say I was soured. My friends experienced the same problems, and switched over to the PvE servers recently and rolled some new characters for the same reason. I’m sure we aren’t alone, and that Blizzard has lost a number of customers who simply don’t want to start from scratch. Larger than World of Warcraft, I began to think of situations similar to what I experienced that heighten gameplay, and there was one that really stuck out. In Band of Brothers, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and every other WWII shooter that has a parachute sequence, it seems that there is always one unlucky plane or two that gets shot up by AA, and promptly blows up; what if this were the case in games like Battlefield 1942, in which a level had players hopping in by planes only to have the crap shot out of them? Would that heighten the tension and enjoyment knowing that you could be nailed before you ever had a chance, or would it just piss players off? From what I’ve seen of World of Warcraft, looks like a bit of both.