Once again, this has finally been re-implemented. The server used to be FFA by mechanic before WotLK, but I had some issues when I tried to reimplement it, and had other things to take care of first.
(As a quick history note,
here is the topic for when it was first implemented.)
The differences, now, are that people can easily party up to trade (presuming you're of the same faction, as per normal), in addition to partying up to avoid accidentally hitting one another, even with AoEs. So long as you're partied, you won't have to worry about it.
Once again, I believe this provides more realism. If this proves to reasonably be too much for people to handle, then I will consider some other solutions I have in mind. Also, keep in mind that I will listen to constructive comments and feedback about this.
I'm not really certain how much realism it really adds to the server. Nobody uses the actual PvP mechanics to deal with their fights, they simply don't work when combined with RP. Everybody who does get involved in combat ends up using the /roll style fighting and emotes to act it out anyway, and that isn't prevented in the slightest by being pvp enabled or not.
I'd actually be in support of Theik's thoughts. As we established PvP isn't exactly the best representation for character combat and such, this becomes more of a hindrance than it does a boon in my opinion. I can see a lot of poor peons getting accidentally executed by miss-clicking grunts.
Personally I like it, even if we use /roll fights or emotes it is still fun to cast the spells on each other to accompany the emote, or go over there and hit them once or let lose an aoe or my favorite as a rogue shadowstep behind any one.
I am for the notion of realism.
While I realize most use /rolls, or the trust system - I like the fact of knowing that it's there.
The concept of heightened paranoia from one of "your own", further contributes to it, at least in my eyes.
Not to really be an unappreciative person here but. . . How would that give you a higher sense of paranoia. If someone hits you and is lvl 80, and you are like 12 and instantly die. . . It's not gonna be like, 'Omg! I just died! It's over man!' It'll just be like, '/5 Why did you kill me man!' -- 'Sorry! It was an accident!' It wouldn't help that much, especially with hunters. . . /shiver Every time they summon a pet it'll go on a killing rampage of lower leveled people.
I think it's a great idea! As Dusk said, I really enjoy being able to cast attack spells on the combatants, just for the effect! As for accidental executions: They are accidental and will only cause a slight delay.
I'd like to reopen this discussion, especially with the new addon in mind.
The problem of automatically killing somebody if you accidentally click on a lower level player or if you want to use visual effects by using some AoE for RP has already been discussed, but I'd like to point out how incredibly obnoxious it gets with the new addon, GHI.
A lot of new custom items are filling up the market now and replacing the old "just imagine it". If I want to, I can have Wink write a book on gears and their effect on hairloss and throw it about. But to trade it with somebody, I have to first team up with them. Then when I want to trade a copy to somebody else, I have to drop the party and make a new one.
It gets so silly that at one point we were just running around in Stormwind in one big raid, so we could actually trade to each other properly, and didn't risk the 'accidentally kill eachother' problem. It seems a bit odd that people would have to team up in a raid to avoid such problems, especially when the whole "but I like feeling endangered" argument is pretty much void; when people have RP fights, they almost always team up to see eachother's /rolls.
I'm considering other solutions for this. I want to keep the FFA part, but now I'm just going to fine tune on when it's applied. I already have several ideas in mind that I wish to test out.
Some fixes you could try:
- Enable trading hostile targets. (If it's not client coded, which I assume it is, sadly enough.)
- Make it a toggle ala pve servers. But instead of toggling ordinary pvp mode, make it toggle FFA pvp mode.
So people could opt in and out of the whole server wide pvp.
As some folks have seen, I've changed the mechanics to a standard RP server. However, toggling /pvp will set an FFA flag up. This was one of the solutions I intended to try, but not unless others didn't work. I was originally intending to change the code so it would be similar to before, but toggling /pvp would remove the flag, as if you had entered a sanctuary. Regrettably, that seemed to be impossible. Therefore, we'll give this current solution a try.
Bear in mind that when you toggle /pvp, your FFA flag will stay up until you do a bit of zoning to get it to drop. I'm not exactly sure of the specifics, but I know that when I zoned to Orgrimmar and then outside, it dropped. I'm not certain whether it's time-based and it was just coincidental when I was zoning in and out of Orgrimmar, or whether the 'home city' thing made it drop. Regardless, be sure to toggle /pvp again, just to make sure, when you're trying to lose it. Also keep in mind that you will get no notification that it was toggled.