Perspective

One interesting aspect of the new Armory feature for WoW is that you can now go look up that bastard who corpse camped you for half an hour. Now I know that I was only one of 49514 (Contrast that with my lifetime kill count of 2372, which unfortunately I was never able to add that bastard to).

I play on a PvP server because quite frankly it makes everything just a tad more interesting. I'm one of those people that actually enjoyed Ultima Online's PvP system. Nothing made your heart beat quite as fast as having the bounty board's number one menace riding towards you. Likewise with WoW, the possibility of random PvP adds a wild card into what could otherwise just be a standard RPG grind.

However, PvP is only really fun when it's relatively even. And unfortunately the design goals of the endless MMORPG gear grind are at odds with the design goals of fair PvP. Even WoW's reward for PvP is just more gear. Which is a bulletproof "rich get richer" game design. That would maybe work if the PvP matchmaking brackets were based on gear value, rather than the mostly useless measure of Level (given that there's a level cap and everyone's at it). Supposedly they've fixed that and added a better matchmaking system for the Arenas, but those aren't "casual" friendly as they require you to form a regular team of consistent players. Essentially leaving no real viable outlet for the occasional PvPer.

But this is all part of the appeal of MMORPGs, I guess. In a singleplayer RPG, you're always the hero. You rise up and save the world. You're special. But in an MMORPG, you're competing against thousands of other potential heroes just like you. Which means you're guaranteed to be outclassed by a large percentage of them, making your digital self just as mundane as your physical one.