For The Children!

This is Calli in pvp gear. Yes, I know. Hard to believe.

And this is Calli's normal view of the world while doing pvp.

And it's all HER fault!

Don’t let her innocent looks fool you.  That Draenie orphan is the living emodiment of the most vile and malicious evil ever to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.  She and she alone is directly responsible for an annual outbreak of QQ of such epic proportions that it renders the official forums uninhabitable for even the trolls at this time of year.

See, here’s the problem.  I don’t want to be in your Battlegrounds.  You don’t want me to be in your Battlegrounds.  No-one wants me to be in your Battlegrounds.  So if we’re all agreed that my being in your Battlegrounds is A Bad Thing for everyone involved, surely it behooves us all to get me out of your Battlegrounds as quickly and efficiently as possible?

Yeah, you’d think that would make sense wouldn’t you, but here’s why I don’t pvp if I can possibly help it.  First of all, I suck.  Secondly, if you want to rub shoulders with the biggest dickheads and griefing cocknockers imaginable, just run a random Battleground.  They’re like a giant fuckhead magnet.

When was the last time you were in a PvE group and someone ran into a Flame Wreath at Shade of Aran on purpose and laughed while jumping on the spot calling you all noobs and wiping the raid?  Have you ever seen anyone in a Rotface group deliberately kiting a Big Ooze right into the middle of the raid and spamming raid chat with “HAHAHA FU NOOBS! LERN2PLAY!”?  Or who gets Vile Gas on Festergut and then runs over to the healers to make sure they get it too all the while yelling “DIE CAREBEARS!!”?  Going into a Battleground is like having half a dozen of these cockmongers in your raid every single time.

I’m in Warsong Gulch and I need to recap a flag with my orphan out.  So I figure I might as well defend the Flag room to at least be doing something constructive while I’m in there.  There are three or four of us all with the same idea, and having people defending your Flag isn’t actually a bad thing in Warsomng Gulch, so I figure everyone’s a winner.  One lone Hordie comes in via the tunnel and emotes at everyone to wait.  We all /cheer at her.  It’s not often the enemy team plays along and when they do you can get the achievement out of the way as fast as possible and get on with winning the game.  Everyone’s happy.  Except for the Rogue who unstealthed and unloaded a can of wtfpwn on the poor troll mage faster than we could all say “wtf?”  We ask him to please let the next one cap the Flag so we can return it, he replies with “FU noobs”.

The next Hordie to enter is a shaman, and this time he actually makes it as far as the Flag before getting the shit kicked out of him.  The Flag is instantly returned by the Rogue, who doesn’t have an orphan out.  He spams chat with more abuse.  The cycle continues.  Not one person gets the achievement, and before long the Horde get sick of trying to play nice, steal our Flag and start Graveyard camping us for Honourble Kills.  Everyone loses, including the rogue.

I’m in Alterac Valley and again we have co-operative Horde.  There’s a Blood Elf mage in one of the Frostwolf towers who’s obligingly recapping the tower flag for us and letting us all cap it one after the other.  That tower must have changed hands twenty times in a minute.  The raid is just waiting for all the other towers to turn blue before running in to kill Drek.  Until someone decided that far too many people were achieving something and runs in and steamrollers her.

Flip the situation on its head however, and let’s look at Eye of the Storm.  To get your achievement in there you need to capture a flag.  In order to capture a flag you need to have a base at which to capture.  Just having a flag isn’t good enough.  So the best tactic to both get your achievement and actually win the match is to immediately grab your closest two bases and then control the centre of the field.  I can appreciate the tears of frustration that the regular battlegrounders must feel when three quarters of their team pop orphans and ignore the bases, rushing straight for the flag in the middle and getting stuck in pointless melee over something (the Flag) that isn’t worth anything and doesn’t get you your Childrens Week achievement unless you actually control a base! But the thing is, unlike you we’re not actively going out of our way to fuck your shit up, we’re just noobs.  There’s a world of difference.

I’ve heard all the counterarguments.  “Yeah, doing pvp in a Battleground is wrong, right?”  No of course not.  But when your carebears are actively trying to defend your Flag room in WSG and your only contribution is to screw them over?  Yeah, that’s not pvp.  That’s being a dick.  “So you carebears have some God-given right to get all the Flag captures in Arathi Basin just because you’re special this week?”  No of course not.  But you guys can cap those flags 51 weeks of the year, we only care about it this one week.   And capping a flag right in front of someone with an orphan out then laughing at them?  Newsflash buddy.  That’s not pvp.  Pvp is fucking over the other team.  That’s being a dick.

Luckily for me, I’m in a good guild.  After two days of soul-crushing frustration trying to get some of the achievements done in randoms, we threw together a group of around five who needed the achievements and got each and every one first time.  We even got the achievements for others in the battlegrounds who also needed them, and working together we also won every single game.  Gee, that’s gotta be afirst, co-operating instead of being a dick?  It seems to work for everyone.  Sure, there were dicks in the battlegrounds because there are dicks in every battleground.  Battlegrounds are where dicks live.  But when a Tank with 60k health supported by an amazing Arena-geared Holy Paladin and Rogue waltz into the horde Flag room and start capping and dropping the flag over and over so the Horde can get the message that we’re here to co-operate, even the dicks on the Horde team can’t do a lot to screw their own side over.

Co-operation beats being a dick every time.  And at the end of the day I’m done and out of the Battlegrounds for good.  Despite your griefing I got my achievement.  By your own criteria, I’ve “beat you”.  And you’re still a dick.