PvP in WoW can be broken down into four different realms: dueling, arena, world, and battleground. Dueling is exactly as it implies: consensual knock each other around until one 'yields'. Arena matches are 3 vs 3 and 5 vs 5 groups to the death. The last two are a bit more complex.
World PvP works like this: each faction has areas that are 'theirs' and the rest of the world is 'contested'. Whisperwind is a 'normal' server, being neither free-for-all-PvP or a non-PvP RP one, so there will be danger in the great wide world at some point. By default, in your 'home areas', you're not flagged for PvP and are non-targetable by enemies who happen to visit, unless you flag yourself for PvP, attack an enemy player or aid/heal/buff a friendly player who is already flagged for PvP. In cases where you didn't turn on your own flag, you remain PvP-enabled for five minutes. In the enemy's realm, you're fair game regardless. In contested areas-- I'm not entirely certain. It's been a long while, but I'll assume you're fair game. I reserve the right to be pleasantly surprised to be wrong. Either way, you don't really hit those areas until your upper 20s unless you have wanderlust.
The Battlegrounds are the 'fairer' optional PvP content. As you level up, different battlegrounds (BGs) become available for play with different objectives and gameplay mechanics. The first is "Warsong Gulch", a simple 10 vs 10 Capture-the-Flag game that runs 25 minutes of 3 captures by a team. The battlegrounds for 'lower' levels are tiered like so: level 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, etc... so you never have to worry about your level 18 getting thrown against a level 80 in a BG. I'll describe the other battlegrounds as I encounter them, but really my mage isn't designed for BG play, as was evidenced by my first trial run.
The character I had been playing most recently before Strev was a warlock. It's a pet class with nasty damage over time spells that have no casting times that can be thrown down while running as well as a fear spell on a stupidly short timer that takes control away from other players for 10 seconds. (read: long enough to rape the average cloth or leather-wearer). After playing something like that, you get spoiled. Still, if your team scores victories in a BG you get experience points, so it was worth checking out. I queued up for a random team and 30 seconds later, I was entering Warsong Gulch with murder on my mind.
The first thing I realized as I was running for my life, is there is a distinct 'gazelle' mentality when playing a cloth caster that can't heal himself and must stop to cast most of his spells. If you lag behind the pack of people dashing for the enemy flag, you are deemed 'weak or sick' and will be pulled down by the cheetahs comprising the other team. Against melee classes I could likely hold my own fairly well. Unfortunately, I never saw any. My brief stint in Warsong was marred by a perpetual barrage of arrows and spells with better range than mine. At this level Frost is a really horrible PvP spec. As I understand it, it matures into something decent with the ability to root, stun, and generally asplode people into shards of meat-sicles, but for now I was just an easy target with less health than the average leper.
For now it is back to leveling and if I just -have- to kick someone's butt, I've got a large number of alts that do well in PvP I can play instead.
The zone transitions in the world of Azeroth are seamless, but very distinctively "flavored"... Westfall, for example, is themed around farmsteads in autumn; Rockridge is craggy meadows, and so forth. After hitting level 21, it was time to venture southwest-ish into a new adventuring area: Duskwood. As the name implies, it is a haunted forest replete with spiders, wolves, and more undead than you can shake a bishop at. After settling in at the inn in the town of Darkshire, I grilled the locals on the goings on then set off on a grand exploration of the zone. Seven deaths later, my revised plans were to stick to the roads as closely as possible and pray things didn't notice me.
Killed a mess of smallish spiders and some starving wolves-- not exactly heroic, but you have to build up to that sort of thing. Along the way I started a couple of Very Important story arcs for the area, beginning to unravel the mystery of how Duskwood came to be cursed by undead and started a series of fetch-and-go-carrys for the local hermit who lives just outside the cemetery. As a side note, the hermit line of quests is my personal favorite in Warcraft and I'll speak more of it some other time. For now, I have procured for him thread spun from the hair of a ghost and have begun a quest to find him some booze. Hermits are my kind of people!
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