A Blizzard poster comments on the Lake Wintergrasp World PvP topic after a fan shared his opinion against pvp flagging.
Zarhym: For all intents and purposes Lake Wintergrasp is a Battleground that is not instanced. The idea is to bring to the World of Warcraft several new approaches to PvP game play. Bear in mind there won’t be any materials or items found in this zone that cannot be found elsewhere. This is not a place you will be forced to go if you want to collect elements, ore, herbs, etc.
The term “forced” is being thrown around too loosely in this thread.
There are plenty of people like you I’m sure that do not care for the idea of having a zone that requires a PvP flag. This is why we have, from the beginning stages of designing this zone, made sure it’s not a place anyone has to go who doesn’t want to PvP. You don’t have to travel through to get elsewhere, nor do you have to travel to it for any sort of crafting materials.
The PvP flag is absolutely necessary to make sure the game play is as fair as possible in Lake Wintergrasp. There’s really not much good that can come from letting players enter this zone without being flagged for PvP while the battle wages on. The zone will have checks in place to monitor the participants and populations in this zone. Having a bunch of unflagged characters running around can upset this. Ultimately unflagged characters could become a distraction to the events taking place, or a hindrance to their faction. This is why no unflagged players are allowed in Alterac Valley. It’s somewhere no one is forced to go, but if you do you have to be prepared to fight the opposing faction.
You’ve made mention of the vast amount of Normal realms and populations. One thing it doesn’t seem you’ve brought much into consideration is the fact that not everyone on Normal realms share your distaste for PvP. Not wanting to get ganked while leveling does not intrinsically mean a player has no interest in fighting other players, particularly when done in objective-based combat. One of my main characters is on a Normal realm yet I spend the majority of my time in Battlegrounds with that character. I can guarantee he will be in Lake Wintergrasp a lot along with many other players on my realm.
