How Not to PvP
Since I've been boasting about Bartolomei's great luck with PvP, it's only fair that I confess one of my other, not so successful forays into player combat.
Ry and I and two guildies were heading up to the Scarlet Monastery. We're all in the mid-40s: priest, warlock, paladin, and warrior. Good solid group. Chatting over Team-Speak, I mention that someone told me you got faction bennies if you killed Horde guards. So as we're passing Brill (the Undead version of Goldshire), without warning the cleric suddenly dismounts and attacks an undead quest mob, flagging herself.
"Huh," the cleric says, "no faction."
"Yeah but that was a quest mob," Ry countered. "Maybe you have to kill a guard." So she does. They're only like level 15, so no biggie. No faction hit either, however.
By this point, the undead newbs are beginning to gather around us, thicker than midges. They dart close... stare at us... then sprint away in terror as soon as we turn towards them. It's sorta like standing in the middle of a school of minnows that really, really wants to eat you.
Suddenly, one of the minnows attacks. A little 8th level warrior launches himself at the cleric, leaping and cavorting. "Hey, Jo-Jo the Monkey Boy is attacking you," says the warrior. He hops off his horse and smacks him once, and Jo-Jo dies. Now the warrior's flagged. At that moment I absent-mindedly re-buff us... and now I'M flagged too. I re-mount.
So we're standing there, trying to figure out which way to the Scarlet Monastery, when Jo-Jo comes hurtling towards us. We're apparently 30 feet away from Brill's cemetery, so he reincarnates almost instantly. Now the Monkey Boy launches himself at me, hoping (I guess) to un-horse me. We watch him for a couple minutes as he savages my stirrup. Then Ry blasts him. Jo-Jo dies (again).. and now Ry's flagged as well. More and more newbs are swarming around us, but they're warier now.
Back to the maps. As we try to figure out the best route to Scarlet Monastery, Ry suffers an attack of Short Attention Span Syndrome. He mounts his nightmare and rides blissfully into the center of Brill. "RY GET OUT OF THERE!" the cleric screams over team-speak. "THERE ARE GUARDS!!!"
Ry sneers. "Yeah, but they're not dangerous. They're like level 15 and... HOLY SHIT THERE ARE LEVEL 50 GUARDS IN HERE!!!"
Looking up, we see Ry and his nightmare fleeing out of Brill at top speed -- with a dozen high level guards, some horsed, hot on his tail. Worse, he's running right towards us. "Don't train us!" the fighter howls. Alas, too late. Ry veers away at the last instant... but the guards charge straight past him -- into the rest of us.
Adding insult to injury, the newbs swarm in for the kill, too.
An insane, chaotic and utterly pointless battle ensues. I bolt... remember that the cleric and warrior aren't mounted (since they'd attacked)... go charging back to help... realize it's hopeless... etc, etc. I'm bouncing back and forth uselessly, aggroing guards. Cleric and warrior are running around trying to escape, while hysterical newbs dog-pile them. Ry shoots for the woods and doesn't slow down until he's halfway to the Scarlet Monastery.
The end result? The cleric and the warrior died, and Jo-Jo the Monkey Boy danced on their corpses. We did manage to rez them. But by the time we'd patched ourselves back together, high level Horders were just showing up. So we fled to the Scarlet Monastery, tails between our legs, and blessed the Light for instanced dungeons -- places where the Horde can't follow you.