Quasi-Carebear PvP

I have a fondness for non-combat mmorpg activities, particularly crafting and in the Wow Auction House. Hitting level 70 through soloing, duoing and forming the occasional PUG was a rewarding experience, but doing the same dailies at the Isle of Quel'Danas is slowly driving me mad. Or maybe it slowly drove me to explore other avenues of gearing up. Since I my other half is keen on pvp, I've finally racked up the nerve to enter a battle ground.

What complete chaos. I joined the Eye of the Storm with the logic that is generally seen as the least active and therefore I assume all sides would be in disarray, following a kamikaze each-for-himself-approach. Turns out it was a pretty accurate assumption. Apart from the few honor farmers who camped at the start zone throughout, everybody else seem to follow a sort of loose plan. One group peeled off to protect the first alliance side tower, another to protect the second and a third to try and get the flag. The third group didn't always exist, sometimes the game strategy was simply to protect the towers. I surmise.

I tried to pick the underdog, but soon excluded getting the flag altogether. My rogue does very badly in moving combat. At the towers, combat are stationary, confined and much more chaotic. And in the chaos nobody knows what anybody else is doing, so I have the opportunity to experiment with my brand new shadowstep pvp spec.

Twenty minutes and three battleground matches later, I have 17 honor kills and had struck a single killing blow. Definite room for improvement. On the positive side, every other player on my side had a minimum of 30 000 lifetime kills at the start and I had a wopping 0. At least now I have 17. Carebear turns to PvP for a little mental stimulation. I'm sure I'm not the first and I won't be the last. So far so good.

The first battleground pretty much felt the same as the first time I logged in my level 1 Druid. My hands were trembling and I was terrified of all these real people that I might have to interact with. Stage fright at its most frightening. Switching to PvP has a similar feel. I am fully aware that my gear is still made of plenty of blues and greens and all of it is PvE spec. and that my PvP stats are filled with lots and lots of zeros. But I am also aware that nobody really cares and if they did, I don't think I'd care that they cared. Everybody has to start somewhere. And starting on battlegrounds at level 70 is maybe not the conventional approach, but it's a damn well legitimate approach. I wonder how many matches it's going to take to make my hands stop trembling and how many tension headaches I'll be staving off over the coming weeks.

Regardless, PvP it is for now. I'm sure I'll tire of that too eventually, but it's a whole new world and a whole new play style that has me feeling both excited and utterly content. I haven't run out of game as I'd fear I had when my xp bar vanished.