I really can't help but feel a mix of depression and anger when reading this entire forum post, and every similar one about doing away with PvE or expanding where/when people can PvP. The simple truth is that PvE exists, and it's preferred by the majority of players. Furthermore, I feel the need to point out that the predominant reason PvE exists is because of PvPers. I say this because I can't count how many times I've seen people quit because they can't even play the game due to being hunted down for no reason. I've been around here for over two years, well before PvE existed, and each map without PvE I see people give up because they know that they cannot play without being killed regardless of what they're doing. Because large groups teaming up on anyone they can or high levels picking on lower level players, or simply camping someone's death chest or the Graveyard they're sent to. All of these are why people asked for PvE, all of these are why people are happy in PvE. Had there been some sort of courtesy system in place, none of this would have happened.
And nowadays, it doesn't get any better. From what I can tell the majority of PvPers aren't willing to help people learn and get good at it. Not once have I seen a PvP town go out and recruit people, and be willing to train anyone in how to be good at PvP. I see trash talking, insults, and angry messages flying all over the place. I'm not saying everyone in PvE is innocent of that, trust me, even I think Lukevillani needs to shut the hell up. But my point is that you guys tend to create such a bad image for yourselves that nobody wants to be on your side. They see morons and bullies, people out just to ruin someone elses' day.
A lot of people love Minecraft because you can build whatever you want, and servers provide the chance to join up with other players to do that. I personally was drawn here because of the Heroes plugin, which many claim is purely for PvP purposes. I disagree. Bringing in RPG elements like classes and skills are what make this server unique in so many regards. What fun is it to defeat a horde of zombies by spamming your left mouse button while standing on a ladder? Having classes that operate in different manners helps bring new life to an otherwise fairly simple and strait-forward game. This also goes towards mobs and special abilities. I for one thought it was great back on Haven when mobs had special abilities, like zombies that slowed you, creepers lit you on fire, spiders made you nauseous, and skeletons blinded you. None of that is strictly tied only to PvP.
But to the point at hand, I can't help but be disappointed in the people who think making PvE a warzone will do any good. People like me will simply log off during that time, and wait until it's safe to log back on. The people who don't know what Wartime is (Which is every new player) will stumble around confused, get killed, get pissed off, and leave like people would do pre-PvE, further damaging the population of the server. Furthermore, aside from an excuse to kill PvE players, what would it accomplish? Congratulations, you now have twice the space to frolic around looking for PvP. Something tells me (Basic logic predominantly) that that is only going to make PvP even more scarce during the full PvE Wartime.
All of this being said, I think if PvP were more evened out and fair, more people would participate, myself included. A better system would probably be capture objectives, or things like the regular 5v5 competitions. Things that have high reward for winning, things that can appeal to all players. Boost tokens, special or rare items, or brand new or custom things. I personally would love to compete if it meant getting an item that made me appear to be on fire constantly, that would be pretty awesome. Yeah, I understand that it can be amusing to dominate a battle and win with little contest, but if things aren't somehow fair and balanced, are you really doing anything more than stroking an inflated ego? I'm sorry, but there's nothing cool or glorious about killing someone who has no chance. And I'm not pretentious enough to think my opinion is perfect, but try and think it all through.
