#9 - July 25, 2018, 11:19 a.m.
I guess I've been having a very different experience to you.
I've been leveling an alt recently and turned on War Mode. All the feelings you mentioned are feelings I had on a PvP realm, and also feelings I have now in War Mode. Especially now I've hit Northrend.
When that level 110 lands in front of my character to mine from a node, the hairs on my back stand on end. I don't know they're going to engage or just fly off to the next mining node.
When I head into an area to kill some mobs for a quest, I don't know if that character 7 levels higher than me is going to attack me or not. We seemingly both just want to get our quests done. There's a wild west stand off kind of moment as we both look at each other, wondering who's going to make the first move, then I get shanked by a Rogue I didn't spot, who starts dancing on my corpse.
When I need to kill a named mob for one of my quests, and I see someone already fighting it. You bet I'm going to attack them and try to defeat them so I can reset the mob and claim it for my own progress. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires and I bite off more than I can chew.
On PvP realms there were players who were there out of circumstance - who had no interest in PvP'ing. They may have been there because their friends were on that realm, but they just wanted to quest and be done with it. There are some of those players out there in War Mode too, who are simply using it for EXP bonus.