PVP: Player vs. PvE.
Maybe a lot of you don't remember the original honor system. To understand what I'm talking about, I'll give you a bit of background.
The old honor system had ranks. Honor points went towards your rank. If you had enough honor points to put you higher than someone else that week, your rank would go up. Essentially, you had to continuously PvP to be high-ranked, and to keep it. You only got gear when you reached a certain set of ranks, Long story short, you had to PvP for a good month straight before you reached high enough to get gear.
Now, with a different honor system, everyone has an equal chance of getting gear, whether they only PvP when they're bored or if they're hardcore. That wasn't a problem when the new honor system came out. When it came out, my guild still did MCs. As a matter of fact, that PvP gear helped push people out of greens and into the blues needed to surpass that horrible raid known as MC. That was helpful.
PvP used to be about being the strongest player, with most efficient quick-kill strategy. The game pretty much, before resilience, was a rock-paper-scissors game.
"Rock" (Plate Wearers) beat "Scissors" (Leather/Mail Wearers), "Paper" (Cloth Wearers) beat "Rock", "Scissors" beat "Paper". There were a few exceptions, as far as the hybrids went, and certain specs. But in the long run, that was the balance of PvP. Resilience broke the table, making Warriors more dangerous to casters with dot damage reduction, casters were outliving Hunters and Rogues, and things started falling apart. Classes needed to be rebalanced to be fair to all classes, and the Arena system began.
Season 1 was a fun time. People who were already clearing Karazhan were taking those drops and duking it out against people still in Dungeon Set 3. Season 2 followed, being about the same, with some people moving into SSC. People were still doing dungeons, with Shadow Labs and Shattered Halls leading the way as the most annoying instances in Burning Crusade, followed by Arcatraz and Black Morass. Things seemed more challenging.
Then Season 3's arrival caused a shockwave that still affects us now. Season 1, the epic PvP gear, became available through honor. Since Season 1 was a recolor of Tier 4, it looked really good compared to the High Warlord Gear, a rehash of the old PvP gear. Also, it was epic. Most people didn't see epics unless they made it through heroics, Kara, or crafted it themselves. But now...epic gear was available from Orgrimmar/Stormwind.
The problem wasn't the BGs, or how the honor system worked. It was the GEAR. PvP gear worked for PvP, and wasn't so good for PvE. If you wanted to PvE, you couldn’t PvP for it, and if you PvE’d, you could still get owned by someone in S1 just because they outlived you. The fact that you can’t miss an attack, or that you crit higher than them didn’t matter. PvPers negated crit, and had double your stamina.
Dungeons became empty quickly. Heroics halted, raids even stopped. Epic gear at a significantly easier difficulty? "Just hit other players, or just pretend like you are", was what a friend described it. PvE literally slowed to almost a complete halt. When this happened, people who were just reaching 70 found themselves at a fork. Work really hard at PvE and wait 2 hours to get an instance group together before the actual run, OR join the PvP wagon to "easy epics". Quickly even the new 70s abandoned PvE, and those not 70 yet trucked along.
In between Season 3 and 4's release, there became a widespread cult towards PvP, guilds of the such sprouted up, people began to turn PvP into the new "epic" measurement. Legendary glaives from Illidan weren't impressive anymore. Guilds who were doing raids, and were struggling through Karazhan, dropped all progression and went to PvP. PvE was finally casual enough for some people, and yet PvP destroyed that.
There are some myths and lies out there. Part 3 is about that…
“Epic Myths”
