One of the thing that really annoys me in MMORPG instance PvP is that there's virtually no strategy, and while that in itself is not a problem (good old Deathmatch is always fun), there's always some bad player that thinks if you somehow move your 8 people in a smart way in something that involves 2 objectives you'll somehow have a numerical advantage in BOTH objectives. Or that it's somehow possible to win any non gimmick map when your team is getting outkilled 3 to 1. Rule number one of MMORPG PvP is that the side with a significant advantage in kiling ability almost always wins no matter what the underlying objective is. It's just really hard to lose a game when you're killing two guys for every guy you lost given both sides start with the same number of players in instanced PvP.
For the most part you never need any strategy because 95% of the time either your team is a lot stronger than the enemy team and you just kill them all or the other way around. The other 5% of the time where your teams are remotely evenly matched, in any MMORPG with a healthy environment it's generally completely impossible to know what your opposition is (too many potential players) so you invariably will start with whatever is considered the 'good' strat for the instance in question, and since the enemy is a match for you, they'd almost certainly use the same 'good' strat, and because almost all MMORPG punishes disengagement (trying to run away just gets you killed), you don't really have any room to change your strategy. Let's say hypothetically you've a standard 2 objectives map with 10 people, so you split 5/5 and the enemy split 6/4. Usually these two objectives will be very far apart, so the side that's fighting 5v4 can't possibly do anything to affect the side that's fighting 5v6. You basically have to hope the side with the advantage wins before the side with the disadvantage loses and this obviously boils down to indiivdual skill. At any rate, if you've two objectives either you've the same people on both objectives on both sides, or the advantage/disadvantage must be mirrored due to both sides having the same number of players. Further, MMORPG PvP almost always favor the aggressor. Let's say you've 3 people in one objective, and the enemy team attacks with 4 and we'll consider this in favor of the enemy to have a 4v3 on an objective. Well at this point your team is at a disadvantage because although you've a numerical advantage elsewhere, since you only notice this when the enemy 4 players arrived it means whatever counterattack you do is going to occur later than the enemy attack. The only way this situation would be neutral is if your team is also on the attack, and in this case assuming it's just completely mirroed, then it'd be a 4v3 and 3v4 going on, and again there isn't any 'strat' here because everyone that can possibly participate is already defending or attacking. Assuming the objectives have equal value, the outcome of this is neutral so all you can say is 'good luck' to the 3v4 guys and hope your 4v3 guys wins first and maybe get back to salvage things for the 3v4, and if not you have absolutely no way to get around it.
So where does strategy come in? Well if you can actually study your opposing team ahead of time then it's workable, but this pretty much implies your game is dead if you can play against the same group of people so many times to actually know what their tendencies are. In SWTOR there were only like one group of high end Republic players on my server and the top Empire players played them so often that we'd know where they like to attack with who so we'll put exactly the right counters to deal with them, but that's only possible because we know there's only 8 guys left that PvP on the entire server on the Republic side. Certainly for a game like WoW you'd never be able to even have an idea of the capability of your own team even if you asked around, let alone the capability of the enemy team. Even with the rated BGs, WoW is certainly healthy enough that you'd expect to see a lot more than just one team unless you're so high up there in the ranking that there's only a handful of opponents you can possibly be matched up against. Though even in this case, you'd assume those guys know the same thing about you and would try to keep things unpredictable, and again with games punishing disengagement and favoring the aggressor, you don't even have much of a choice sometime even if you picked the wrong strat because attempting to change it is going to be far more disastrous then hoping people pull some hero ball and win 1on3.
For the most part you never need any strategy because 95% of the time either your team is a lot stronger than the enemy team and you just kill them all or the other way around. The other 5% of the time where your teams are remotely evenly matched, in any MMORPG with a healthy environment it's generally completely impossible to know what your opposition is (too many potential players) so you invariably will start with whatever is considered the 'good' strat for the instance in question, and since the enemy is a match for you, they'd almost certainly use the same 'good' strat, and because almost all MMORPG punishes disengagement (trying to run away just gets you killed), you don't really have any room to change your strategy. Let's say hypothetically you've a standard 2 objectives map with 10 people, so you split 5/5 and the enemy split 6/4. Usually these two objectives will be very far apart, so the side that's fighting 5v4 can't possibly do anything to affect the side that's fighting 5v6. You basically have to hope the side with the advantage wins before the side with the disadvantage loses and this obviously boils down to indiivdual skill. At any rate, if you've two objectives either you've the same people on both objectives on both sides, or the advantage/disadvantage must be mirrored due to both sides having the same number of players. Further, MMORPG PvP almost always favor the aggressor. Let's say you've 3 people in one objective, and the enemy team attacks with 4 and we'll consider this in favor of the enemy to have a 4v3 on an objective. Well at this point your team is at a disadvantage because although you've a numerical advantage elsewhere, since you only notice this when the enemy 4 players arrived it means whatever counterattack you do is going to occur later than the enemy attack. The only way this situation would be neutral is if your team is also on the attack, and in this case assuming it's just completely mirroed, then it'd be a 4v3 and 3v4 going on, and again there isn't any 'strat' here because everyone that can possibly participate is already defending or attacking. Assuming the objectives have equal value, the outcome of this is neutral so all you can say is 'good luck' to the 3v4 guys and hope your 4v3 guys wins first and maybe get back to salvage things for the 3v4, and if not you have absolutely no way to get around it.
So where does strategy come in? Well if you can actually study your opposing team ahead of time then it's workable, but this pretty much implies your game is dead if you can play against the same group of people so many times to actually know what their tendencies are. In SWTOR there were only like one group of high end Republic players on my server and the top Empire players played them so often that we'd know where they like to attack with who so we'll put exactly the right counters to deal with them, but that's only possible because we know there's only 8 guys left that PvP on the entire server on the Republic side. Certainly for a game like WoW you'd never be able to even have an idea of the capability of your own team even if you asked around, let alone the capability of the enemy team. Even with the rated BGs, WoW is certainly healthy enough that you'd expect to see a lot more than just one team unless you're so high up there in the ranking that there's only a handful of opponents you can possibly be matched up against. Though even in this case, you'd assume those guys know the same thing about you and would try to keep things unpredictable, and again with games punishing disengagement and favoring the aggressor, you don't even have much of a choice sometime even if you picked the wrong strat because attempting to change it is going to be far more disastrous then hoping people pull some hero ball and win 1on3.
