Despite what some people may think, I do enjoy a good round of PvP in the various games I’m playing. I especially enjoyed them in WoW and GW2, but I’m certainly not limited to those two games. The one game where I’ve been trying to enjoy PvP and have simply not come to that conclusion yet, is Wurm Online. There’s a few reasons why I’m not satisfied with PvP in this game but the number one reason is due to the complete hands off approach of combat itself.
That, is not what I wanted to write about though. What I wanted to write about is what do you do if you engage in PvP in a game where your death means you quite literally lose it all. Wurm Online PvP means you leave your corpse behind afterward, and it can be looted. There are of course methods of making this as painless as possible. Don’t carry around expensive items when you may be ambushed. Be prepared from the start to lose everything that is on you. So when I went out at the beginning of the week to the Chaos server I should have kept these things in mind, and I didn’t.
I was on a boat, two characters. One had armor and tools, the second had just armor. I spotted another boat headed straight towards me in the distance, and I turned around to try to avoid them. Aboard their boat were 3 players total, and one of them a priest which meant long range attacks (spells) started flying early. I had no defense against these. My characters have high pve skills, good fighting (70+) and were wearing 70+ ql chain armor, but that was nothing to the three who were fighting me. I attempted to fight back when they were within range, but that didn’t work out and before I knew it I was staring at the death screen. Lost all my armor, and my tools. Thank goodness I left the drake armor at home as well as other sets of tools (although I did lose my best stuff).
I was furious. Combat is done in such a way that if you are out numbered even by players who are weaker than you, there is a good chance you will die. I wasn’t expecting boat combat (nor the fact that they were priests and would be casting from boat as you can’t enchant from a boat so why can you cast other spells) etc. It was annoying and I was angry at myself for even being out at all with my good gear and tools. For that, I had no one to blame but myself.
So what do you do in this situation? You find yourself now stranded on a pvp server, no gear, no tools. Do you give up and decide not to play any more? Honestly that’s what I felt like doing. I may enjoy PvP but I do not enjoy losing items I’ve paid for or created myself (not to mention there is affinity loss as well as skills). I spent the next 10 hours trying to get back home to my server of Deliverance. Thankfully a friend lent me a row boat and I was able to sail one character along the coast to pick up another character. Then I went home. I started counting the tools I had left at home and put together a meager set. Nothing as impressive as the ones I had lost, but tools to get me by.
I logged off there for the day frustrated, annoyed, and angry. Those feelings died down through the night because I absolutely love Wurm Online. I’m just not too keen on that aspect of it. I even still enjoy PvP. I’ll just have to be wiser if I partake in it in the future. So losing all of my armor and tools was not the end all be all of my time in game. I’ll rebuild. I’ll gather new tools and new armor. I’ll learn some tactics, and plan things out better. Honestly I wasn’t expecting to get jumped like that, where I was. Yet another mistake to learn from.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
PvP is and has always been primarily a group activity. Even the world PvP in EQ2 was done this way — and world PvP in WoW, back before both games sanitized PvP with no-lose arenas and battlegrounds.
People alone are what PvPers hope for.