well for example:
last night we were doing a temple run, before we get in the instance, i spotted a group of alliance on track so we all hid around a corner, the group runs ahead and we engage, battle for a bit, they die, and we move on. nothing special there, just costing them some time and group pvp is fun :@
doing an escort quest in a contested area is always fun
fearing the last member of an alliance group before he goes into the inner maraudon portal is always a hoot
corpse camping the asian farmers in azshara
generally the group on group stuff pre-instance stuff is always alot of fun, can be frustrating if you lose but it's all in good nature
and yeah, there is an element of danger, dying isn't a big deal but the time it takes away is
there's not much ganking going on on my server, occasionally you'll get some high levels running around a lvl 20-30 zone, but then the low levels call their high level friends and that's the end of that (or then it escalates into a big thing where one faction raids the other town, but i'm sure city raids happen on PVE servers too)
but generally when i'm out grinding i don't get ganked or even attacked, when i see alliance we just /wave and that's that
i mean, currently there's no real "point" to it. it's just something fun to do when you're bored and don't feel like doing PVE shit. i can see how it wouldn't be for some people, but as long as you don't take it too seriously and just go in to have fun, there's no real downside to it