Quote Originally Posted by Rolder50 View Post
The real problem is that there is no reason for people to even BE in the open world so it'd be pointless.
I'm in the open world a lot. Hunts, FATEs, gathering, tribal quests, treasure maps. So are other players. Unless it's middle of the night for the region, it's rare that I don't run into several other players. There may not be enough to make the zone feel "lively", as others have put it, because they're spread out but players are definitely present.

What I don't want is for those activities to be disrupted because someone is in the mood to beat up other players. That's part of why instanced PvP was developed - so players with no interest in world PvP can do the other content in the zone without it being disrupted.

One other thing that I don't think anyone else has mentioned yet is rewards. The vast majority of players are very reward focused, and they don't include "having fun" under rewards. If there's nothing they consider a worthwhile reward for participating, they won't do it.

Which is a shame - I did have fun with friends in the old Southshore-Tarren Mill battles in WoW back in Burning Crusade and Wrath before Blizzard decided to destroy Southshore in Cataclysm and there was no reason left to defend it.