Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor. Consider the following incredibly simplistic notion of honor as it relates to our historical myths of idealized combat:

The notion of the honorable warrior is, of course, completely idealized. In the real world, humans have been doing rather horrible things to one another for quite some time. But in both Eastern and Western culture, the notion of the honorable warrior, the ‘fair fight’, and the ‘rules of engagement’ have emerged.