Well for those of you following Warhammer Online and any small scrap of news you can get, today their first Warhammer Beta Update. This is apparently the first in a series of weekly updates designed to keep the playerbase up to speed during the next couple of months. From one of the community managers, James Nichols:
Hello everyone,
With all the work we have been up to we wanted to share what we have been working on with you, below is the first update we have shared with the beta community. We think you’ll be excited as we are, enjoy!
Waaagh! and well met!
So this begins the first of our weekly updates to the WAR Beta community. This is where we keep all of you up to speed with the changes, enhancements, and additions to WAR during this downtime. Each week will have different information from the various teams. Some of the information we’ll be keeping fairly high level, at least initially, but we will work on giving you insights into what to expect when we re-open in December.
The update has a small snippet of news from several of the different teams, including RvR, Public Quests, Items, Cities, and Combat & Careers. The one piece that has generated the most buzz, questions, concerns, and panic in some cases is the piece from the RvR team of “pvp flagging”. This was first brought to my attention by Keen with two different posts on the subject which are great.
I’ve read through the threads on this today at Warhammer Alliance and Only-War.net. Many different views, perspectives and questions have been tossed out there. After wading through it all, I think I’ve got things straight but I’m still waiting for further “official” clarification from James, Josh or someone else at Mythic. Since it’s late, I thought I’d re-post a couple of forums posts from these threads which seem to sum things up nicely in a way that I understood. First a post by Garthilk, Site Manager for Warhammer Alliance:
PvP Flagging in PvE Areas
The basic premise is that you have a flag while you are in a PvE zone. If you turn on the flag, you can PvP other people who have also turned on their PvP flag. You can turn your flag off and after a period of time, relatively short, you can go back to PvE mode. Basically what flagging does, is expand the areas where players can PvP. The downside is that players who already decided they don’t want to PvP, and are thus in PvE zones, are now faced with PvP folks who want to PvP.
Under the current system, PvE folks wanting to contribute to PvP can goto a battleground and choose to engage. They are never forced, or in any way directly pressured to make a decision about whether they’re going to PvP or not. With flagging, now the pressure is on PvE players to, or not to turn on their flag while in PvE areas.
Is the PvP enabled low level guy stealing your mobs just a lure? Are people hiding in the mobs hoping you target a PvP enabled guy, to trick you into turning yours on and attacking him? Are neutral healers just bumping up their morale on NPC creatures, just so they can turn on their PvP flag and spam their super morale abilities?
Now on the other hand. I firmly believe that PvP fans deserve their own server where folks can PvP whenever they want. A place where any Dwarf can attack any Orc at any time, anywhere. Note I’m not talking about inter-realm fighting. I’m talking about a server where any racial enemy you have, you can fight at any time.
Secondly, a post by Skyles, one of the moderators at Only-War.com:
Just a few examples of the way PvE and PvP has been described as being mixed and restricted:
1. Quests were originally described as coming in three colors - the Yellow Quests were PvE quests set inside PvP (skirmish) areas of the zone that did not require conflict with enemy players. More risky than Green (PvE goals inside PvE areas) but not focused on PvP goals like Red Quests.
2. Conflict (or competitive) Quests have been described as public quests that require indirect competition between the two factions - pitting them against one another in competitive PvE activities. These happen without any direct combat between the players. The earliest example we had described to us was in a PvE area, in which Dwarf players were trying to bring beer to revive wounded soldiers, while Orc players were trying to kill the wounded soldiers - first to reach its goal would win. While they’d originally said that conflict quests would exist in both PvE and Skirmish areas of the zone, more recent comments indicate that they may not be including conflict quests in the skirmish areas.
They made it pretty clear when they described this in early 2006 that players would be able to travel into enemy PvE areas to pursue private quests and compete in conflict quests. So, not only will we be seeing enemy players in PvE areas and be unable to attack them, we will be competing with enemy players to achieve quest goals (watching them kill allied NPCs in competitive quest areas) and be unable to confront them directly.
The point of Conflict quests is to ease traditionally PvE players into a competitive mindset - give them an opportunity to compete with the enemy without risking direct combat, learn to enjoy that competition, then move into more direct conflict in the skirmish areas of the zone.
3. We’ve been told that during the looting stage of a capital siege, there will be public quests targeting enemy NPCs - enemy elites (like a swordmaster, to get weapons), lieutenants, and rulers. Defenders will have public quests to defend those NPCs. We’ll be fighting NPC bosses being defended by both NPC troopers and live players.
4. They’ve repeatedly commented in interviews that most players hate both meaningless PvP (handled by the RvR design) and PvP that interrupts them while they’re having fun doing something else. To deal with that, PvP has been restricted to large designated areas within each zone - allowing players to choose whether they want to engage in PvP or not. Further, they’ve included a visible warning for anyone who crosses into the skirmish area of a zone - “warning, PvP will be enabled in 10, 9, 8…” - to make absolutely sure that anyone in the skirmish area is there voluntarily and actively looking for a fight, not an unprepared victim.
These are all great examples of why I’ve repeatedly tried to explain that RvR does not equal PvP in WAR. The game is focused around the competition for land between the factions - that competition it will be made up of a lot of consensual PvP within (large) designated areas within each zone, but will also include PvE activity, PvE quests in skirmish areas of the zones, and a range of PvE elements mixed into the PvP activities. How heavily PvE elements will be mixed into the skirmish areas still appears to be getting balanced (obvious with the comments that they’re likely to drop conflict quests from the skirmish areas, drop Dogs of War NPCs from the scenarios in favor of cross-server queuing, and adding more NPC guards to the warcamp entrances).
More directly on-topic, the first big change being implemented here is that enemy players in your PvE area will no longer be able to grief by killing your quest givers without risk of reprisal. When they attack your camps, they will now be flagged for PvP by NPC guards and subject to attack by players. That’s a good thing.
The second change, the ability to voluntarily flag yourself, means that you no longer have to walk into a skirmish area to get flagged for PvP. You will be able to attack flagged enemy players even in PvE areas; you will be able to flag yourself before entering skirmish areas so that you can jump right into the action, and; you will be able to flag yourself when wondering PvE areas if you want a more lively experience. They are reducing the restrictions, making PvP action more accessible outside the designated skirmish areas of the zone (previously only described as a possibility when a PvP engagement that starts in a skirmish area spills out into the PvE areas - they told us that as long as a fleeing player keeps taking or delivering hits, his timer to drop his PvP flag would keep getting reset). Fewer restrictions, options to voluntarily engage in PvP no matter where you are, these are also good things.
At the end of the day, it appears that only one thing has truly changed from the original design - players can now opt to flag themselves pvp in a pve area in order to have the option of engaging in pvp combat there. As I understand it, this wasn’t even an option before.
O.k….take all that for what you will. I need some sleep. 
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October 19th, 2007 at 11:48 pm - Edit
I still can not fathom that an orc and dwarf could stand side by side and not have the ability to stab eachother’s eyes out. It’s so anti Warhammer! I reinforce my GRRR!
October 20th, 2007 at 11:55 am - Edit
I can see the logic in easing players into PvP. But, honestly, I doubt that logic holds water. Not many people are going to be convinced into direct PvP by indirect PvP.
So I’ve gotta agree with Keen. I lost a bit of my enthusiasm for WAR.
October 21st, 2007 at 10:10 am - Edit
Here’s a solution I could live with, from the thread at Warhammer Alliance:
“Here is my feeling: There should be no Daoc-style invisi-walls on borders, but they should BE barriers - Like the front lines in a war - they are well guarded and patrolled and thus hard to breach. If you do breach the front line, into enemy PVE areas, you should be in constant danger of being eliminated by enemy players who catch you (and flag to engage you)
Since there are quests in these areas, they will of course be harder to complete, and rewards will be appropriate for this.
That requires instant flagging when entering the opposing PvE zone. If this does NOT happen, if enemies can roam my “home zones” freely unless they CHOOSE to flag, I will consider WARs zone system broken at its very core - as a Dwarf, me seeing a stinkin’ smelly greenskin and not being able to cleave his ugly mug is completely, 100% stupid.
GREEN = DEAD. Period.”
October 21st, 2007 at 11:56 am - Edit
A lot of whiners people on the WoW forums have been hailing WAR as the “WoW Killer” because they were under the impression that PvP in WAR was going to be an all-out, never ending blitz of PvP action. It’s interesting to see that the WAR devs are actually taking a somewhat WoW-like approach to WAR PvP with the PvE/PvP zones and flags. I’ll be interested to hear how it actually gets implemented in the final game.
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:36 pm - Edit
I like that frontlines idea, though it might be hard to implement this late in development.
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:34 pm - Edit
I’ve never been a big fan of “arena” style PvP - either you PvP or you dont. When I played DAoC (pre-new frontiers) there really were no invisible walls - you came across the big realm castles and they were imposible to breach so PvP ended there.
If your going to let the other realm into my hunting area then I want the option to kill them - you flag PvP the moment you step into an enemy zone. Like Keen says, “I still can not fathom that an orc and dwarf could stand side by side and not have the ability to stab eachother’s eyes out. It’s so anti Warhammer!” Amen!