Duels

At any time in your travels, you may opt to have a 1v1 duel with another player. You do this by selecting and walking up to him, right click on his portrait and choose the Duel option or by using the /duel command. A duel flag will then appear between him and you. If he accepts the duel, the battle will commence; he will turn hostile and his name will change colour to red. During this time, all combat rules specific to your server ruleset will apply, such as the spell limitations of control type spells on the PvP server.

The duel does not end until one of two things occur. When one player's hp is reduced to 1 or less, the result of the duel is announced to the area near the duel flag. No deaths actually occur and the defeated player is simply set to 1 hp. The duelling area is a large area of roughly 50 yards centered on the duel flag. If one player leaves the duelling zone for more than 10 seconds, he is considered to have forfeited the duel. Alternative, a player may also use /forfeit command. The results of this will also be announced to other players nearby.

There is no penalty for winning or losing a duel except that both parties have to spend some time after the battle to heal their hp and mana.

NPC Guard System

Many NPCs in the game will have guards protecting them including quest givers and vendors. Some of these guards are clearly visible while others are summoned only when the NPC is attacked. Some of these guards will keep spawning regularly until the NPC is killed.

Since the introduction of the PvP system some NPCs from the opposite faction will come up with the civilian tag. Killing civilians will now result in a Dishonorable kill.

Guards all have very fast respawn rates. If you want them to stay dead for a longer period of time then don't loot their bodies. As soon as you loot a guards body that body will decay and spawn within minutes. By not looting bodies you can double the re-spawn time.

Paper, Scissors, Rock

Game balance is of the utmost importance to Blizzard and they're approaching PvP with a rock, scissors, paper type solution so some classes will fare better against others in combat. It sounds unfair but Blizzard have made this decision to encourage teamplay and guild formation. A mixed team will always fare better than a team with only one character class. An example of this is that Priests can beat a Mage fairly easily however Priests find it much harder versus a Shamen.

This also allows for exciting gameplay as unlike other fast paced 3D multi player killing games it means that everyone doesn't have the same armor / weapons. It offers an entire new platform of tools to players to offer much more depth to player versus player combat.

Level-Based Combat

PvP Combat in World of Warcraft will be mostly level-based, just like when fighting against monsters. Attacking players higher level than you will result in most of your spells being resisted. This means that a higher level player will always hold a combat advantage unless their levels are very close to each other. Blizzard is aiming for a system where 2 players of a certain level are roughly equal in combat versus one player that is 10 levels higher. There are currently no level restrictions on who you may or may not attack, Blizzard have suggested that there are no short term plans to introduce a system where high level players cannot attack low level players.

Arenas

Arenas are places where players can meet up to battle in pre-arranged PvP battles which would be suited for guild vs guild combat. (although currently it isn't used for this) There are actually 2 known arena spots, one is located in Orgrimmar, the other in Stranglethorn Vale, near Grom'gol. These areas are currently designated to be Free For All (FFA) areas where anyone may attack any other person regardless of faction.

Currently the only Arena which is open is Gurubashi. Here players can compete every three hours for treasure which is dropped off by a pirate. This treasure is strongly fought after on all servers and contains items from around level 30-45 which is consistent with the level of mobs in STV. It has been noted that some level 50-54 items have dropped however this is much rarer.

If players wish they can team up to defeat a common enemy, typically this encounter lasts from 5-15 minutes, first one to the chest gets the contents there are no loot sharing rules even if you are in a party.