If you are not interested in World of Warcraft, MMOs or PvP in games, this is not the post for you.
I have, as a rule, never been a PvPer (Player vs Player, i.e. fighting other people instead of the computer) in MMOs. An explorer by nature, I dabble with socialising and achieving, but my sole experience in the killer archetype was when my Star Wars Galaxy character - a Teras Kasi Master/Master Doc found itself (in that "a stopped clock is right twice a day" way that SOE's constant 'balancing' made inevitable) the PvP flavour of the month. I would run around Coronet starport's entranceways murdering rebel scum, and I can't pretend that I didn't get a real buzz from the "danger" of it all. But I usually role-played it by hanging around rebel starports in my Stormtrooper uniform and hassling the locals.
Anyhow, in the couple of weeks I suddenly started PvPing in World of Warcraft. I play on a roleplay server - Moonglade - and I suspect that I would find it much harder going on an open PvP server, but I have been finding it a lot of fun. I don't even know how it happened. I don't remember how I ended up in there after months of ignoring the battlemasters. The devil probably made me do it.
Th first thing that had to change was my character spec. My latest alt, Gracci, is a Tauren druid, and that makes for some good options, but the resto build I used for PvE and instances had to go, and I spent my gold piece and joined the growing... herds?... packs?... of feral druids that everyone loves to hate. Two weeks on and I am already sergeant rank, although until I reach level 30 I can't get promoted again.
What I have learned is that skill counts. By level 26 my druid could take out any other level 29 character - rogues, warriors and other druids included - if the opposition wasn't up to scratch. I also learned that the Horde tends to win, and suspect that this is because of being honed by endless, outnumbered Sundays at Crossroads into a highly-tuned ganking team.
Of course, a team with Teamspeak, it seems, will beat one without unless faced with absolutely insurmountable odds. I have only fought twice with teamspeak, in two successive battles where we were outnumbered 10-8 most of the time by allies who were almost all 27-29 against our 22-27 plus one 29 priest. We won 3-0, 3-0 in a matter of minutes each time and then the allies went to bed. This reflects my experience in America's Army, in Dungeons and Dragons Online and elsewhere about efficiency. In combat, I guess, communication is king. Who'da guessed?
Druids do seem to have distinct advantages in PvP: if one druid, in cat form with the 30% speed increase takes the flag, and I wait in the tunnel with rejuv, regrowth, healing wind and then entangling roots I can make sure that they'll get away. Everyone fixates on the flag-carrier and don't realise that they are unkillable and then uncatchable so long as I live. We are the wing-forwards of WoW, able to tackle, play in the backs, scrummage, ruck and maul. Mainly maul. I can only imagine the opposition's faces when they see our attack team running at them pause, and then they are suddenly are faced by five cat-form druids, each with mark of the wild, thorns, regrowth and stamina/intellect buffs using assist to buzzsaw through them, one at a time, two seconds per kill. That seven man attack is dead in no time.
The final battleground last night we won to nil. I mean that not one of our team died in a 3-0, 10 v 10 battleground. Ally deaths were probably c. 110.
Now I hope you didn't read that just in caseI said something non WoW.