《魔兽世界永恒》开发者称希望部落与联盟玩家 PvP 爆发激烈对抗，只要行为不“真正堕落”

How will you be playing World of Warcraft Forever? The PvE, PvP, and RP split is just as much of a hot topic as Horde vs Alliance, and there's unquestionably a lot of value to be gained from the ever-present threat of real player-on-player danger. But joining the PvP realm comes with its own risks, so should you commit to it when launch day arrives? Senior Game Designer Josh Greenfield and Lead Game Designer Tim Jones are joined by Josh Corbett of the Countdown to Classic podcast, plus WoW streamers 'Savix' and 'TipsOutBaby,' for a conversation about the various ways to play, and what Blizzard wants Forever PvP to be.

Because World of Warcraft Forever is adopting a 'realmless' system, all players within its three rule sets are essentially in one giant server, although you won't see everyone at once. There's PvE, where the whole game is co-op and there's no threat from rival players; PvP, where Horde and Alliance can fight each other around the world; and RP, the roleplay server that focuses on people who want to invest more into the story of their character. One thing missing from the MMORPG this time around, however, is the combined RP-PvP bracket.

"We have to look at the service holistically and look at the impact it could have," Greenfield explains, remarking that while the very earliest days of WoW RP-PvP servers were something special, "the unfortunate reality is every RP-PvP realm we've done since then has followed a very different trajectory." He gives the example of Season of Discovery's Crusader Strike realm, where Blizzard ripped the RP tag off about three months in because too many people had joined who simply weren't following along with the roleplay rule set.

Which realm should you choose? Greenfield emphasizes that there's no wrong answer, but stresses that you should think about it carefully ahead of the full release, because "the sanctity of balance" means you won't be able to swap out later. "If you roll on the PvP server and six months in you're like, 'Yeah, you know what? This just isn't really for me,' that's not a thing we can really facilitate, and your only option at that point will probably be to re-roll on the PvE realm. So I just want to remind everyone: search your soul, make sure you're playing in the place that is the right place for you."

Digging more deeply into the hopes and dreams Blizzard has for player-vs-player encounters in World of Warcraft Forever, Jones says the team is particularly keen to see "organic battles happening in the outdoor world." He's already been pretty happy with some of the instances of this in beta, but thinks natural competition for specific areas where limited resources can be found will be even more noticeable once players are set free from the beta's level-30 cap.

"Once people can level to 60 and we have that critical mass of people killing every single type of mob in the game, one person will realize, 'Holy cow, what is this recipe?' Or, 'This new rare material drops from this specific creature, in this specific zone, in this specific POI.' People are going to go crazy once they find out this is possible to get in just this one singular space, like the Crusader enchant, things of that nature. So I think we're going to see a lot of organic competition over these new recipes that people don't even know exist yet."

"We want to create objectives," Jones continues, "give people the tools for organic PvP to happen." He notes that Season of Discovery gave the team lots of good feedback here, both for "awesome world events" like Battle for Ashenvale and the Strangelthorn Blood Moon, and for those that "didn't really land," such as capturing towers in Eastern Plaguelands or gathering sands from Silithyst geysers.

Those objectives could get particularly bold. "Even encouraging people to attack each other's capital cities," Jones says with a grin. "Tim wants blood," Greenfield nods, "He wants you to come attack Stormwind and he wants to go attack Orgrimmar, or vice versa." Savix comments that this is a good way to "bring the war back into Warcraft," a phrase Blizzard has leant on frequently in recent times.

The Forever team might have lots of ideas, but Greenfield is aware that "A light touch is a better touch when it comes to actually encouraging real PvP." The team is therefore being cautious about presenting opportunities rather than just laying down systems. "We want to be careful with making PvP feel too 'competitive,'" Jones explains. "We want it to feel free-form. We want to not necessarily establish too many rules." He adds that the team "loves what we've been seeing so far in beta."

"We want PvP to feel casual," Jones remarks. Even in Battlegrounds, he says the design is to let players "focus on the fun before they feel an obligation to grind." He promises that the top-ranked armor will "look amazing" for those who put in the effort, but says Blizzard is being careful that gear stats from one area aren't necessarily the definitive best option for that particular activity. "We don't necessarily want to silo people into saying 'you have to do PvP in order to be the best at PvP.'"

Greenfield confirms that WoW Forever's Battlegrounds should ensure pre-made groups always go up against one another. "If you queue solo, you shouldn't get put up against a pre-made, pretty much straight up." Solo players might find themselves alongside small groups of two or three, he notes, but you won't find yourself in matches against fully preconstructed, coordinated teams.

There's always the one thorny question of PvP: how much camping or griefing is too much? Being at risk of attack from the opposite faction is part of the experience, but Greenfield believes, "If we are too quick to step in, then it's like, okay, what's the line between 'This is too much camping' and 'This is not too much camping?'" He doesn't want players "afraid you're going to get in trouble or something weird's going to happen because you're sometimes kind of being a jerk on a PvP server - it just happens, right?"

"I also think that one of the things that's great about PvP servers is the high highs, but you need the low lows with the high highs to really make it pop," Greenfield ponders. "Every time you get camped for a couple of hours, that is maddeningly frustrating. But man, when you have a really good fight in Blackrock Mountain trying to get to Upper Blackrock Spire, that's the stuff you'll remember for years."

Jones adds that he hopes such incidents also encourage players into the social side of WoW Forever. "Ideally, through some of that stress and frustration that people experience, it drives people to social solutions. Being in a guild, having people that have your back; being able to log off and jump on your main and murder that guy who's been camping you in Stranglethorn, or getting a couple of buddies to come and back you up. Those are the amazing situations that we want to continue to exist." Having too many rules around PvP "muddies that experience," he concludes.

"I think it just depends on the behavior, and what we see," Greenfield says. "If anything's abused or anything becomes truly degenerate, then we'll have to step in. But as much as possible, we want it to feel like original WoW, right?" Jones nods: "We want the strategies and the way you play the game to feel as much as possible like the original vanilla game."