Carebear Extraordinaire

My first pvp experience was Star Wars: Galaxies. I rolled Empire and within seconds of flagging in Naboo, I was ganked by hordes of rebels. But in SW: G, it wasn't enough just to kill your opponent, you also had to spit and otherwise defile their warm carcass, all the while corpse camping them to the end of time. SW: G had no version of Battlegrounds, still doesn't as far as I know, so pvp'ers had little to do with their time other than type /spit and wait for you to crawl back to your dead body so they could gank you again. And spit on you more.

Needless to say, I didn't pvp much after that.

For some reason, that experience made a lasting impression on me. All the way into my third year of playing WoW. Before Battlegrounds, I did dabble in some World pvp, mostly defending Crossroads. But those forays into player-versus-player combat were few and far between. The different Battleground events released sporadically, but I never even tried them. Instead, I contented myself with questing and raiding. To put my mind at ease, I pretended the pvp rewards sucked.

But after some not-so-gentle prodding from a fellow guildee, I tried a round of Arathi Basin last week. . . and had a blast. Battlegrounds pvp is so fast-paced, no one has the time to /spit your dead corpse. It's a relatively strategic affair, with an end-game zerg rush that helps finish the round earlier rather than later. I'm also revisiting Hellfire Peninsula and doing the pvp daily there. I try to kill Alliance while camping flags, but they usually run off before I can finish the job. Though I did manage to fully dot one poor alliance slob who flew away only to die mid-air.

Highly satisfying, that.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm any good at pvp. I'm still learning the ropes, and though some of my pve experience translates over, I still see Alliance opponents and fellow Horde run circles around me. Still, I'm very well-geared, and that makes up for a lot of nubness.

So I guess this means I'm not a Carebear anymore. Which is a good thing, because I really want that raptor mount.