Sheep tend to be timid, nervous and easily frightened. Having little natural means of defense, they instinctively join together in a group, called a flock, to run from perceived danger.

I kinda laughed when I read this account of a WoW player who decided to go Horde hunting at Tarren’s Mill and was soundly thrashed by players who were far better trained and equipped. The funniest bit was when he went into full sheeple mode and hoped that WAR wouldn’t give such an advantage to people with better gear and skills.

All members of the flock will follow any member of the flock that happens to lead. Whenever one animal is separated, it will frantically try to rejoin the flock.

Everyone does start out equally in WoW – level 1, 10 hit points, ploinking stuff walking randomly ten feet from where you were born. Sure, it’s not like a FPS game – it’s harder. How you spend the hundreds of hours to get to max level is up to you. Spend it getting great gear and lots of experience in PvP? Or spend it goofing off in instance runs and spending all your money leathercrafting?

*When driving sheep, keep them together in one group rather than allowing two or three small groups to develop. (If the flock is split, the smaller groups will keep trying to get back together and more panic and chaotic movement will occur).

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Any game with any sort of PvP focus has to fall into one of two camps. One is, all wolves. These are games like Shadowbane or Lineage. You’re a killer, everyone is a killer, you will die five times a minute and all your stuff will be taken until you learn how to run with wolves. Thinking you will somehow avoid PvP is silly.

The other sort is one with wolves and sheep.

Now, you have to raise your sheep to be good prey. You might do this by letting them run free in safety for awhile. As they get older, you make it a little more dangerous. They can still avoid it. Then a little more dangerous, the walls which seemed so distant now poke their tops above the horizon.

It is rare for the sheep to move away from the wall so the handler can anticipate the pathway of the sheep.

Time goes on, the sheep do some crafting, some roleplaying, compare the height of the spikes on their shoulderpads, and write pages and pages of fan fiction of the girl-meets-monster-with-heart-of-gold variety.

Levels go up, walls move closer, and the sheep realize that they are in a pen. They bleat a little. The only way left to go is through that dark gate into the wilderness beyond the walls. Where the wolves have been gathering, all this time. Hungering for sheep, and fighting each other for domination.

*All goats and sheep with horns know how to use them and can be dangerous, especially to inexperienced people.

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The producers of Warhammer have SAID this. PvE at the beginning, all PvP/RvR at the end. DAoC was like this. ALL PvP. And yet people still have this weird idea that Warhammer will be this casual, friendly, colorful, safe place like World of Warcraft where nothing bad can ever happen to you.

It’s those bright colors and cartoon-like characters that convince people that it will be like WoW, and I am certain it will start out that way.

Get people emotionally invested in their characters enough so they won’t quit when the wolves come calling. Then, it’s feeding time.

Usually, the other sheep will scatter away from the person and the “caught” sheep.

I was a guide briefly on one of EQ1’s Team PvP servers, Tallon Zek. Fully half of the petitions I got were from people who couldn’t understand why someone would want to HUNT THEM. They hadn’t done anything to deserve to be tracked down and killed by people they didn’t even know. They were just peacefully doing quests, or wanted to xp in the Plane of Innovation… we had to talk to every player, and each one knew they were on a PvP server, they just didn’t expect anyone to do it to them.

Warhammer players: If you’re not going to get in the game to be a wolf, don’t bother complaining when you realize you’re a sheep.