I haven't seen where the pvp neutral towns will have vendors that are a necessity for pve. However, when you have a game that has both pve and pvp, and the pvp rewards can be used in pve, you pretty much inevitably get some people pvping even though they don't like it to get the rewards.

A lot of WOW players consider it to be important to keep the sargeant rank, because the across the board 10% discount with vendors is so useful. With a hunter I am leveling now, I am in the mid 30s and tired of pvp. However, I'm about halfway to revered rep with WSG, which would guarantee me a nice blue bow every ten levels for the rest of the game. So I keep grinding away because the bow is worth a bit of aggravation.
 

To balance this good idea, Blizzard also makes a very bad change to PvP: Neutral towns in the new zones, which need to be captured in PvP to have access to the quests and vendors there. That looks good on paper, but is of course catastrophically unbalanced given the generally prevalent Alliance numerical advantage. The neutral towns will be in Alliance hands 80% of the time on most servers. Worst case scenario is that the neutral cities are so important that people start moving server, just so that they are on a server where their faction has the advantage.

This is why I will play PVE on any character I create for BC.
 

If what you say here is true, WOW is headed for a decline. I am one of the many players who enjoy wow's PVE system very much but really don't understand the point of PVP. If I truely will have to battle it out in PVP "neutral" cities in order to acquire quests in the expansion, then I am not going to buy the expansion, and just wait for something else to come out that grabs my eye. It seems to me like Blizz just doesn't understand that in order to make their PVP balanced, they almost need to start over and turn PVP into a completely seperate mini game. I have loved playing World of Warcraft for months now but all of this PVP-PVE hybrid nonsense has me a little worried.
 

I have a feeling my Gnome Warrior (who dinged 40 last night. Second highest toon. Yay me!) will become a PvP Warrior. I'm sure he will be a good Tank for our Guild but I love dishing out serious damage with him. He "tanked" the Stockades last night after dinging 40 wearing just 3 Plate pieces (the rest were Mail) and his Whirlwind Axe from the Cyclonian quest. It was me and two Guildies; a Rogue and a Mage in their mid 20s.

None of us died although both myself and the Mage came close at one time or another. Several levels ago I tanked SM so the more Tanking XP I get the better.

I know I shouldn't tank with a 2H weapon but with my 2H Axe dishing out 35dps compared to my 1H Mace's 25dps, the CC ability of the Mage & Rogue, and with no Healer (a BIG factor), I figured taking down Mobs as fast as possible was the best strategy.
 

As a largely PvE player on a PvE RP server, I don't expect this to cause any practical problems although of course like absolutely any change to any MMORPG it will cause whining.

This shared world PvP doesn't mean care bears like me are obliged to play more, or even any PvP, it just means a mutual respect is needed. Some (but as far as I can tell nowhere near a majority) of the high level PvE content will require visits to an area that can only be secured through PvP. That means PvE focused players will actually care what happens in PvP, which is good for everyone. But just because you /care/ who wins the baseball tournament doesn't mean you run onto the field to join in. If you choose not to engage in PvP you will still be able to go to the neutral villages whenever your faction controls them, and so even if Tobold's unlikely 80% / 20% split occurs that means there's a > 20% chance that you can do some more neutral village quests in your next casual play slot. Because of the importance of team work and experience in PvP any influx of solo or small group PvE players who are trying to "unlock" content by whacking defenders isn't likely to speed up the re-capture of a village substantially anyway.

Almost everyone in this space who has done territory control based shared world PvP has made it easy to capture territory, yet hard to hold onto long term. Usually this is achieved by making attack and defense largely balanced, but reducing the incentive to long term defenders, thus discouraging players from sitting around guarding an area for days or weeks at a time. So I expect that if Blizzard offers say, a buff for taking a village and the buff affects that faction for e.g. 2 hours or until the village is re-captured whichever is soonest, you'll see villages change hands every 2-3 hours during peak times. The other mechanism that's been used is to latch capture progress - so everything done to help the attacking side is irreversible, and eventually their advantage is overwhelming and they capture the village, then it starts over.

Now, Blizzard might completely flip this upside down, building a system where captures are rare and last for months. That would be interesting, but it doesn't necessarily affect the equation for ordinary PvE players. Blizzard could ensure that quests will be effectively interchangeable anyway (your side has so-and-such village with the "Kill 40 Lime-flavor Murlocs" quest and the other side has this-and-that village with the "Kill 25 Cola-flavor Murlocs" quest and in a month's time you'll swap) just like the stuff in Desolace where you make a "decision" to support one tribe or another, and then do more or less similar quests regardless.
 

I was in this game from launch on Ner'zhul, a PvP server. I had two level 60's within six months of launch, but I don't care much for large group PvP. And the lame honor system doesn't work for adults with real-world responsibilities. So I quit playing.

I have been waiting a long time for them to fix the honor system. It was obvious they needed to do this from the day they patched it in. Blizzard knew nothing about PvP and is still learning.

As far as forcing the PvP content on PvPer's, I don't like it. If people don't want to PvP, they shouldn't have to. But PvP is not a mini-game. The PvP servers are hugely popular for a reason. A lot of people enjoy PvP. And Blizzard made a lot of promises pre-launch they failed to follow through on. Just as the PvE'ers don't like to be forced to PvP, I don't like to be forced to PvE.

Look at the gear situation. In order to be competetive in PvP with the raiders, you have to raid. The number one problem was, is, and will be gear. The PvP gear has to be brought up to par (at least for PvP purposes) with the raiding gear. Ideally, it would be better if the PvP gear gave an advantage in PvP over the PvE gear, thereby incentivizing those that want to do both, get both.

But Blizzard is still hinting that the gear will not be on par with the raiding gear. Hence, they are still forcing the PvPers to PvE. Hence, I am waiting to see how this plays out before I bother to buy the expansion and resub.
 

Argh.. that was supposed to be large group PvE, but I guess I also don't like the large group PvP either. Life and death is almost pure chance in a big fight.