The absolute first PvP related situation that I tried out was a scenario which are basically instanced combat zones with objectives. It lets you choose which group you want to be in and if you want to be, designated as the Main Assist target, I chose a random group and went on my way. I didn't see anything related to a main assist window or anything of the sort while actually fighting however. The first scenario was one I queued up for individually since I had a quest for it beforehand, it was Nordenwatch where the basic back story of it is that the forces of order are using artillery from Nordenwatch to destroy Destruction vessels, in response to that, Destruction sent a small attack force to take it over. It's objectives were fairly standard, we had to capture and hold nodes for points, and it was a small map too, so 3 nodes overall. In the end however the first match didn't go so well, I had gotten into it while the match was ongoing, and when I did manage to get into combat I hardly could scratch the enemy, it took me sometime to figure out how that actually worked, and to this moment what I don't entirely understand is that while the game (generously if I might add) levels everyone to a single level, and adjusts their stats accordingly to that level, it also does not take away the advantage of gear, or skills that one would obtain during that level. As I entered at level 8 and I didn't have level 9 or 10 abilities, as well as my gear wasn't the best, I felt like that I had a significant disadvantage. I also noticed while everyone is the same level, there were people with different ratings on them. I'm not entirely sure how a player's rating is decided against your own, my guess is that it either has something to do with renown against your own, or items and stats against your own. While I can't ever say that not being able to kill someone was the best first time experience I ever had, it was definitely intriguing enough to see how strong my character could become in the first tier.
After losing my first Scenario I went into the queue again and did a new public quest while waiting since it was near the chaos encampment. The quest was fairly similar to the one I did previously in fact, but it was different enough and in a different situation making it stay really enjoyable. The objectives were to kill 60 zealots of the empire, at which point the prophet leading them sacrifices himself, and then a few of the zealots who spoke of their doom were hailed and became the stronger prophets of doom. These are champion level enemies with a few normal guards, so they weren't very hard to dispatch. Finally at the end we fight the final prophet who had two guards, although both of the guards were champion leveled and the prophet himself was hero leveled, the guards were able to be pulled separately, making the fight itself fairly painless. I did this a few times with the same people who were probably there as the same reason as me, to either do the quest for fun ,or to do the quest for additional items, which I was glad for later on when I tried to do the public quest with a few other new people, and it resulted with a lot of the people leaving. The rewards for the public quest still pulled me in, while the crafting material rewards were always seemingly the same, there's usually a green and white quality item at the top that was different from one public quest to another.
Hard rated public quests also existed that I had tried to do but no one else was around, and the objectives were definitely meant for a large group of people. In fact I wasn't able to complete the second phase of the quest, the first was to kill around 90 villagers which wasn't very hard with AoE abilities even though the villagers themselves did do a respectable amount of damage. The second and the last one I saw was to put 12 houses on fire, the main problem with that is that it also spawns 2 hero enemies that put the fires out quickly afterward, I presume the only way to prevent that is to just kill them, but it wouldn't be possible without a greater amount of people. I ended up just running away and moving on to other things.
After doing public quests for awhile, and not getting into any Scenario queues I decided to join a queue for all of the Scenarios to see if that made a difference, and tried out some RvR areas finally in the mean time. I was immediately and amazingly differently pleased by how the RvR experience was within the first few minutes. The first thing I noticed is that I was able to kill a enemy fairly easily on my own, and that's definitely not only fun but relieving after experiencing the few neigh invincible enemies in the Scenario. The second was that the RvR areas felt a lot like confined world PvP combat. The not so obvious things are like how the players handled the battles themselves, while all of the battles are in the end for the objectives and the objectives are regulated to being in the proximity to capture, and then hold it for a few minutes to actually solidify your faction's reign on it, often times battles were more around the enemy camps because one side managed to push the other back that far. While no battles as far as I saw ever escalated into the camp itself mainly because both war camps have extremely strong guards although still level equivalent, so it is possible in my opinion at least, to push the enemy back and invade their camp. Even still, while I said there was a lot of combat that is basically fighting near the camps, making it feel a whole lot like days of World of Warcraft before Battlegrounds were implemented, there still was enough fighting around the objective itself to have the original concept still be in place. At the same time against that same concept, the game system itself acknowledges that you will be outnumbered, and it gives you a buff that is named something along the lines of “your faction has engaged a larger army” and then it gives you additional reward factors, but extra XP and renown is not exactly enough to be able to make a difference against the said larger army, so in the end it's more like saying that losing will probably be inevitable, but it's still worth your while to fight.
While the RvR was going on, the Scenario queue of course popped up, and since it felt like I got more renown points from there, I decided to take it. This time it was the Blood of the Black Cairne, which I later found out was only accessible due to it being a holiday weekend, and that renown and experience points were increased here. The experience I had itself here was a vast improvement, the Scenario again was a capture and hold to deplete points deal, this time there were 5 nodes instead of 3, making the initial rush a lot more spread out. I didn't do anything exactly creative the first round, and decided to go straight up the middle, I ended up being able to hold my own with the other numerous people who fought in the middle. We still ended up losing the Scenario but it was a very close game, on subsequent forays into the Black Cairne, I had won quite a few battles, and went to other nodes just to see how they were, usually it was only a few people who also went to the said nodes, resulting in small 2-3 on 2-3 battles, with the main core of forces engaging in the center.
After all that was said and done, I had gained enough experience to level from 8 to 10 in a matter of a few hours, and my renown level was raised from 2 to 9. PvP is most definitely (and not surprisingly) WAR's strong point in almost every way. It even has features that makes PvP very accessible like leveling everyone to the same level, or giving comparable XP as if you were doing quests or any sort of PvE activity. Finally, it has standard rewards and a progression system that makes wanting to get to the next level very doable, and more importantly, it makes you want to do it.
That about wraps up my day in WAR for today. I'm going to continue to see how far my Choppa can advance gearwise and go for the last level the trial lets me get, but as far as I can tell even after that point, PvP in WAR seems like it would be fun at any time.
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