f13.net

I'm going to post this here as it's come up a few times recently in one of Conan threads and a DDO/LOTRO thread.

A lot of people seem to believe PVP is a niche playstyle, but I think World of Warcraft has changed that.  Now you could argue that PVP in WoW isn't real PVP, but what we do have in WoW is a situation where players chooses a server based on it being PVE or PVP.

I grabbed data today from the US World of Warcraft server status (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/) and European World of Warcraft server status (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/serverstatus/), in a vain attempt to combat the stupidity on the LOTRO forums.  The following figures have RPPVP Servers grouped with PVP Servers & RP Servers grouped with PVE Servers.

For US I get 83 PVP servers compared to 73 PVE servers.

For Europe I still get 112 PVP servers compared to 67 PVE servers.

Total servers numbers for US + Europe is 195 PVP to 140 PVE

My theory on the PVP being even more popular in Europe is mainly down to the lack of influence of early UO, anyone else care to comment?

PVP as the name of a style of gameplay is so varied. As I said in the DDO thread, it all depends on the implementation. Consensual PVP is obviously VERY BIG, based on WoW's numbers. But open PVP (Shadowbane) is not. Having a buggy implementation can also have a dramatic effect on numbers, as evidenced by Shadowbane.

PVP is not anathema to mainstream, mass market gamers, it just has to be done with careful design.

Make PVP safe, fairly risk free, and people will play it. As shown by WoW. Now, if you lost EXP and/or items or even had debt, I would imagine that the number of PVP servers would be cut in half.

PvP may be safe in WoW, but it's also pretty meaningless (I'm talking about "world" PvP on PvP servers). I'm surprised people would prefer that over Shadowbane. It's the same thing basically -- but without depth, rewards, or consequences.

Who claims that?  PvP is far and away the most popular playstyle on the planet.  
Oh wait, you meant non-consentual PvP.  No, that's niche and will most likely always be niche.

There's a few reasons why PvP in WoW is successful:
1. Absolutely no loss to your character when you are ganked.  You don't lose any progress you have made so far, whether that is gold, xp or items.  You keep all three through PvP deaths.
2. It's consentual in that you know exactly where you are vulnerable.  No surprise ganks because you thought you were in a safe area where you couldn't be ganked.

There are rewards for PvPing in WoW, even if it is prohibitively difficult to obtain them.  There's no loss, but then again, I don't equate loss of character resources (gold/etc..) with meaningful, more like annoying.

I disagree.  The reason that WoW's PvP is successful is because it's a part of WoW.  Those two attributes are also present in other, less successful mmogs that have adopted pvp as well.  You have merely cited two reasons why people are willing to participate in mmog pvp in greater numbers.

What planet have you fucking been on?  Did you fucking miss the part where I said "you could argue that PVP in WoW isn't real PVP", I wasn't talking about non-consentual PvP.  I was talking about the clear distinction a player makes during the WoW server selection process of deciding on PVE or PVP.

If I have to explain a few lines of text to you, don't bother answering the fucking question.

It takes a whole lot of effort to make a PVP game work. Most people won't devote as much time to it as they should (WoW, EQ2, everything excluding Eve) or just don't know how to (SB, EQ2(haha)) unfortunately.

PVP-lite games like WoW are good time wasters for a couple of months, so I look forward to the next 4 generations of WoW clones.

Like Haemish says, it's got to be a very careful design. Very VERY fine line between brilliance and a Shadowbane-esque bomb.

I hate pimping Eve in basically every other post that I make here, but I love the fact that you can carebear in .9 and 1.0 systems making 2 million / hour, tops, and be in a battleship in a few weeks. Or, you could tough it out in 0.0 and be in the same battleship in few hours.

The rub is that you could lose it in a few hours in 0.0. The way EQ/WoW clones work, with items making or breaking your guy, a system like that will never make sense.

(http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/8594/d180acs9og.png) (http://imageshack.us)

Is the one on the right REALLY worth 26 times more than the one on the left? Even if you could lose it in the blink of an eye?

How is that different than what I said?  I didn't say WoW was successful because of the PvP.  I said PvP in WoW was successful because it didn't cause losses for the participants and it involved consent.  That there are other MMO's that are less successful overall and also have consentual lossless PvP says nothing about PvP success. In those other games, when they ARE moderately successful, the PvP is generally moderately successful as well (see DAOC).

I'm drawing a blank. The only thing I can think of being rewarded with is a miniscule bit of honor (which can be obtained faster and in bigger amounts on the battlegrounds).

Also, when I'm talking about rewards in SB, I'm not talking about individual rewards necessarily (which seems to be a big part of what WoW PvP is all about). I'm talking about land/resource grabs and the like.

I was trying to be smart, must have been too obtuse though, I guess.  I'm just pointing out that there's nothing new here, no major shift.  WoW is a phenom, no doubt about it, but the choice to participate in a PvP server or PvE server is relatively minor.  Since PvP in WoW has no dire consequences for your character, it's not likely to indicate a change in attitude about PvP.  People have been playing lossless PvP games for ages, and they've always been popular.

The way that you stated it this time is a much better representation of what I think you meant the first time.  I happen to be in greater agreement with this iteration.

There are PvP items you can obtain in WoW after you gain a certain rank.  It's just too difficult to GET to those ranks, because you are competing with other players on your own side for those honour points.

Remove the grief from PVP and people will like it. People love PVP, they dislike "the PVP culture" of griefing, trashtalking, etc.

WOW didn't prove that, DAOC did. DAOC was also derided as "carebear" by the "real pvpers" who created the aforementioned culture of grief. DAOC and WOW prevent you from speaking to the other side which is huge. They provided some safe zones, more I think for DAOC. Eve circumvents the grief culture because it's too complicated for most of the immature jerks to play, much less enjoy.

Well, yeah, I knew about those, but remember, I'm just talking about World PvP here. If I was looking to get PvP gear, I sure as hell won't go about it by killing players in Hillsbrad. I'd spend time in the BG's.

[edit] Or are you talking about something else?

Not this thread again.

Your version of meaningful isn't what people want to play.  Get over it.

Nebu, you think Shadowbane would be a success if it was redone with Warcraft brand?

Certainly it is much easier to get consistently active PvP in the Battlegrounds (not surprising, since that's the only reason someone would BE there.) but the system doesn't discriminate between honour gained there and honour gained in world PvP.

Don't try and be smart, I've been reading the LOTRO forums all day.  

I disagree, virtually everyone thought that PVE was the majority playstyle, even yesterday on this very forum someone mentioned it.  Yet in WoW we have over 50% of the population, through choice, pick the PVP server even though the PVE servers have battlegrounds.  The type of PVP offered in WoW obviously has a major major effect but why has a PVP server suddenly become the more popular choice?

..and yet on those PvP servers they'll also be participating in PvE the vast majority of the time.   I do see your point, but I think it just boils down to this: Lossless PvP is fun sometimes, and you can participate in it on the PvP servers more readily, and quite frankly many people DO like to Gank, even when there's no loss for the loser. 

I think there's another reason that PvP works in WoW, and that is that progress of your character is quite rapid 1-60, so you don't feel like you're losing as much time if someone ganks you.  You also have many other options for places to get XP and quests. 

[edit]
One other thing, DAOC has the same thing and even has (had?) a completely PvE server as well, yet the "normal" servers were still very successful.  The only difference between WoW PvP and DAOC normal servers is that in DAOC you never had to go to the contested areas at ALL and still progress to 60.  In WoW, you do. 

One of the most brilliant decisions WoW ever made was to keep the Horde and the Alliance from talking to each other. Sure, you can do rude emotes -- but frankly I'm generally already rezzing and don't notice. There's no trash talk, because I can't understand a damn thing they say.

I am not Nebu, but I honestly believe that if Shadowbane had the Blizzard polish it would be the game I'd be playing.

Warcraft doesn't mean shit. The game actually, you know, WORKING means everything.

I think it would have been more successful than the original Shadowbane.  Of course, that could be attributed to either brand recognition or game stability.  Maybe both. Were it not such a buggy game, I think Shadowbane would have been significantly more successful.  Tack on the Blizzard name and you'd do even better.  

Do I think it would have been as successful as WoW?  Hell no... different markets.  


Bah, beat me to it!  I agree that I'd likely be playing it as well.  Right now Warhammer is the title I'm anticipating most. 

Anyone care to have a stab at why the EU is different to the US?

My guess from right field is that the average European player has had broadband longer than the average US person. Therefore, he played more FPS games back in the mid-late 90s, so he's more inclined to enjoy player vs player stuff.

I guess the cop-out answer would be cultural differences.  Is WoW in Korea?  If so, what are the server ratios there?  

This may sound bad, but my gaming experience has found EU and Asian players to be MUCH better at accepting losses than Americans.  As a PvP enthusiast, most players will lose encounters more often than they win, thus it requires a different temperment.  I think this may be a contributor to why pvp is more popular/accepted in those cultures.

I'll put in a sure to be unpopular opinion, but most of the non-Americans I've met online have been far more mature. My guess is that PVP is more popular because there are fewer jerks. Ditto for Asia. I played in the Taiwanese beta for Lineage 2. I saw 2 reds in the weeks I spent there and neither was griefing anyone.

I lasted like an hour in the US beta. It was nothing but grief ganking and racist, homophobic, misogynist trashtalk.

Edit/Add: You could say a lot of the same things about Eve. Full PVP game and look at the level of maturity and lack of griefing. And it's European dominated.

Consensual pvp in a non-retarded and reasonably balanced environnment where even a new player can have fun rather than get continually stomped on has always been popular. See CS, DAoC, EVE, Chess, Magic, etc etc.

The problem with UO, the Zeks, Mordred, shadowbane, etc is that environment was always either non-consensual, retarded, hideously unbalanced, had stupid barriers to entry into pvp, or had the risk/reward so far skewed in favour of vets that newbies just couldn't afford to take part.

On the point about Europe, I don't know why pvp is more popular, but I doubt it has anything to do with UO, which was available over here anyway, and these days is too long ago to matter a damn. It's not just an effect seen in wow though, daoc was the same if you compared average RP earnt, a quick look at the EVE territory maps suggests a disproportionate amount of territory controlled by europeans, etc etc. My suspicion is that a smaller proportion of European players are casual.

And as various others said above, all wow proved is that is possible to market mmog's to a wider market if you have the right brand. Almost every single pvp and pve concept included has been seen before and been successful before. In terms of pvp, mostly in DAoC (and ofc 90% of daoc had been done before as well).

What?

Ganking in SB is the same with WoW, except without seiges, player cities, or land conquest. And all I'm saying is that I'm surprised people wouldn't prefer the former (SB). Surprised. Nothing more. Not that I want them to play what I play or force them into things they don't want. Try not to read so much into my post.

Broadband was rare over here prior to 2000. I couldn't get it where I live (in fricking London) until 2002.

WoW PvP is a fun, quick, and meaningless sideshow.  That's the kind of PvP that huge numbers of people have always liked.  It's like saying "97% of characters in EQ /dueled at least once, PvP is really popular."  Sure it is, if you define it that broadly.  The term also becomes effectively meaningless.

There also seem to be proportionally more PvP servers in the "low" population range, which would make me suspect that the number of active characters is closer to 50/50, but that's pretty much irrelevant.

Was there any launch lag for Europe or did they go live at the same time as the NA audience?  PVP servers got really popular (in that they started putting up more PVP than PVE) once Blizzard realized everyone was playing them.  That would have influenced what server PVP/PVE ratio they decided to have.

Less whiney little bitches?

Has anyone considered there's more PvP servers, because Blizzard wants people on them, rather than PvE servers.  As ElGallo mentioned, most PvP servers are at Medium or Low population, compared to the PvE servers.  Blizzard's been pushing PvP for a while, and balancing the game around it (while ignoring the item imbalance.. which is puzzling.) rather than PvE.

  It works out much better for them if everything is PvP.  With their slow churn of content, they can focus on more PvP battlegrounds rather than PvE raid zones which take a lot longer to balance and design.

Of course, no one reason is the catch-all.  It's likely a mixture of everything mentioned, in addition to the initial Bliz fanbase having 'grown-up' with B.net. PvP is simply how games are played.

PvP in Shadowbane resulted in the losing side quitting the game at an alarming rate. 

Why would they want PvP with an enormous pile of annoying shit on top of it when they could just have PvP?  I can (a) die with no consequences and still enjoy the overwhelming majority of the game's content (because it's in PvP-free instances) at the snap of my finger or (b) I can die and have this city I worked on for months ripped to nothing overnight and then be locked out of a huge portion of the game's desireable content for a very long time thereafter.  I'll take the first one prz.

Yup rare, West Yorkshire got broadband Nov 2001.

Er.. except that it's not.  Get ganked in SB and you lost equipment durability and, most likely, everything you were carrying.  On top of that you got a free trip back to your home tree.. hope you weren't too far. Get ganked in WoW and you get a trip to the spirit healer - a maximum 3-5 min run.  No durability loss, (unless you spirit rez)  no loss of items or inventory.

Winning wasn't much better.  Once everyone's razed or pacified, all you have left is the lovely PVE.

I was thinking UO as having a greater influence in the US due to the lasting effects of player word of mouth rather than number of actual players.  I also thought UO wasn't widely available in Europe until UO:R when the worst ganking was over, (though I might well be wrong).

With all due respect to various posters here on f13, does this surprise you? Look at how we, mostly adults, mostly intelligent, mostly "nice" in real life, treat each other in posts daily, and the culture of grief posting and (insert adjective here) trashtalk in MMOG's that allow PvP should make a lot more sense.

Ok, not sense, in the normal sense, but deductively obvious...it still doesn't make any "sense" to me why people have to treat others that way...

WoW went live here about a year ago, so the US had it a few months earlier (that could explain a lot).

There are many important aspects of WoW PvP that make it popular:

There are places where you can't get ganked.
There are groups (your own side) that can't gank you.
There are low penalties for getting ganked.

I'm all for PvP with consequences, but consequences increases both the incentive to grief and the disruptiveness of griefing. Player justice may work but nobody has any idea how - simply killing the guy who killed you obviously does not work at all. A player justice system that had the right tools and safeguards in place may work, but nobody has ever tried that and most people don't have the talent to design such a system.

---

However, to say that WoW shows that PvP is popular is like saying that WoW shows that Gnomes are popular, or that awful armor models are popular. Maybe PvP isn't popular at all, just WoW PvP in the entire context of the game is popular.

Did Super Mario show that jumping is popular? I dunno...should we add jumping to Scrabble?

I think it's silly to pretend that people have attitudes like "PVP rules!" or "jumping rules!" or "putting on the hammer brothers suit rules!"

In games the devil is ALWAYS in the details, and people here constantly talk at a level so high it's meaningless. WoW PvP is popular not because attitudes are changing but because WoW does some very specific things that other games don't do.

Again I would stress that although the figures are from WoW I think they are interesting because.

1. More players clicked PVP rather than PVE.

2. PVE servers have battlegrounds.

Margalis, If the "the devil is ALWAYS in the details" then at the very least, WoW players were very well informed on the different rulesets before they created their first character.

Nebu:
I don't. The brand would bring more intial boxes, but most of those people would be gone after the first time their city was destroyed.  Stabilty would slowed the loss of players, but I remember my guild disintergating and there was a lot more complaints then sb.exe.

My city was never destroyed while I was in SB (not that we didn't taunt the uber-alliance), but I do remember razing 4 cities.  Most of them vowed to destroy to us, but they never did because most their membership found other things to do.  And I think that's why the uber-alliance never razed us, they didn't want us quit.  We were their only active oppisition.  The rest of the land was filled carebear neutrals that would fold under the slightest pressure. 

Even in a game that was advertised as open PvP, the majority of players would rather log off than deal with conflict. I am sure many told themselves that they would eventual go hardcore later, but they usually didn't when faced with the realities of the game.  And I don't see how adding the Warcraft theme and the Blizard pollish would change that very basic aspect.

While I agree that people treat each other worse over the Internet than they would face-to-face the whole trash-talking "culture" you often get in PvP games is the same as the sports/locker room/buddies ragging on buddies trash-talking you hear in real life. The difference of course is that in real life you are doing it in face-to-face so you are either doing with your friends or you think you are tougher than the guy you are putting down.

I really don't want to argue that SB is better here (though I do think you and Merusk are a little inclined to just point out it's negatives). It's all beside the point anyways. I'm just surprised that a PvP system with less features and possibilities is a success, even though it has an almost identical ruleset to SB's (i.e. I can get ganked and annoyed just as easily by 5 +lvl players in Stranglehorn, and blocked from quests and mobs just as I could outside Khar in SB).

Most people don't consider losing months of work a "feature", to most people thats a game destroying bug.  Even to the ones that played SB.

Battlegrounds weren't in the release game, and at release people were told that the upcoming "honor system" would prevent griefing. I think that went a long way towards people clicking on PvP. And once people click on PvP the rest of their friends and guild-mates do to.

Although the honor system was garbage PvP as presented by Blizzard is for the most part what people got - no huge risks, not dominated by constant ganking. Blizzard tried to convey that their PvP was different from a lot of what people were used to, and that is true despite the fact that the honor system was a steaming pile.

True, but they have had battlegrounds for over a year now, it's going to be fair to say most of the current WoW players were not playing a year ago.  They have to have some kind of churn and less than a year is reasonable.

I found the figures interesting, if a few people are going to go "oh that's easily explained", ok fine, I can run with this new assumption that PVP, designed carefully, has a larger attraction than PVE.  I'm just surprised that everyone is taking it so well.

Edit - Have battlegrounds been in more than a year?

Just clear something up for me. Which part was the "game destroying bug"? Losing a city, or losing a city that took "months" to build? There's a fine difference there.

Discourage anything with EXP loss, dept and/or item loss and I would imagine it will be less popular.

I'm not pointing out negatives,  I'm pointing out falsehoods in your statement.  You can't say "the two are identical" and ignore some very significant differences.  Loss of items and a trip across half a continent are the least of the differences.  The Horde can't raze Stormwind and force you to grind gold for a month out of the noob zones, hoping you don't lose that cash too.  Shadowbane that can happen.  Two very different games, despite the level-based similarities.

Whats the difference? any city worth anything took months to build and rank up not to mention ungodly amounts of farming.  What you don't seem to understand is that for most people wows pvp system has more features than sb did because it doesn't punish them at every step of the way.  No durability loss vs durability loss, no item looting vs item looting, no property destruction vs city razing, all of those are pluses on WOWs side of the equation, not shadowbane.   For MOST people wow pvp = shadowbane pvp without all the things that made it a bad game, not "pvp with less features".

Are you seriously reading what you are posting?

As a business, do you open more servers for a PVP playstyle to get more people to play them? That makes no sense, you would let the current ones fill up more - less servers = less overhead.

Im not sure how you think Blizzard is "pushing PVP". How many PVP instances have been made? 3 total. How many PVE instances and encounters? Between dragon encounters and total endgame boss fights, probably at lest 15x that...most of which involving a lot more than a simple CTF game.

Yes, I'm reading it.

I'm just poking the discussion to its retarded endgame faster than 8 pages while repeating the sentiment I've heard from several guild members and other denizens of my realm.  Conspiracy theories and tinfoil hats for all.

Fact is, whever you care most about is what you perceive the developers and gaming community cares least about.  I've seen the stupid in all the PvP vs PvE, Us vs Them (teams), and Class vs Class discussions across all games.  It gets tiresome.

Maybe.  Considering how many times I heard, "What does RP stand for?" on my RP server, I think people might just pick whichever low usage server is recommended.  Ours was still showing up as a top pick even after they created new servers, so we continued to get flooded.

So I would lean towards a good number choosing the path of least resistance, ie they went where the login server told them to.

Not to be nitpicky, but I said the two were "almost identical", and that was only referring to how often one is allowed to attack or meet interference from other players (i.e. how "open" the Open PvP is). No, I can't get corpse looted in WoW and yes, there are more safe zones, but in my experience, I found SB no less irritating (as far as roaming around the game world goes). Instead of the item loss of SB, I'd be forced, for example, to use a potion in WoW (which isn't cheap) in order to survive a fight. In bad situations, the cost difference balances out.

On some rare occassions, WoW could be worse. SB didn't have "quests" that one could get blocked from, while, for example, WoW would give me a quest (a very crucial class related one) to gather 30 Troll tusks in Stranglehorn....Only to be met day in, day out with groups of +10 Alliance raiding the zone and ganking my ass. That would never need to happen in Shadowbane.


Sometimes (if you're unguilded -- And rarely anyone was).  


I'll give you that. But this is my point about you concentrating on negatives. Stormwind can't be razed, correct, but WoW doesn't have player cities either (a "feature" so to speak). At least SB had cities to raze (that's me being "positive, y'see? ;)) At least SB had zones and guilds to conquer, instead of PvP that doesn't effect WoW's Alliance or Horde factions either way.


Acquisition of items too (again with the positivity).


I have to wonder what the heck you were farming for a month in this case. In Shadowbane, yes, that can happen --- IF you were you trying to build a city all by yourself. But what lone player would need a city in the first place?

Now, if you're just talking about equipping up for yourself, you'd gather all you need in gold and items in under 3 hours. For repairing, 30 mins.


Anyways dude, I probably lost the overall argument here (whatever it was), but I figured I'd point some of those things out.

[edit] Yikes, spelling.

You make very valid points.  It's also silly to argue about what will never come to pass.  I guess we'll have to agree to disagree and be done with it. 

I think there is a larger pvp market out there than many expect.  We've just never had pvp implemented properly enough to attract a majority of those players let alone retain them.

My knowledge of Darktide, Shadowbane and the Zeks is secondhand, but my understanding is that land control was essential to both and could really fuck you up.  My brother told me a story about his guild getting driven to some shitty little island in SB with only one xp-giving mob on it.  His whole guild had to level off that one mob.  In AC, some places were just obscenly efficient for xp and loot compared to others and big guilds could keep those locked down.  I couldn't imagine levelling without Incunabala and the like.  On the Zeks, teams could lock you out of all the good loot and xp as well.

In WoW, the most valuable locations are: AQ, BWL, MC, BRD, DM, Strat, Scholo, BRD, etc.  All instanced and all PvP-free, even on PvP servers.  You are right and make a good point that rolling on a PvP server opens you up for some annoyance while levelling up in places like Hillsbrad and STV, but there are other places to go (even PvP-free instances, if you have a group) and that's a pretty short time in a character's life anyway.

I played around in the Taiwan L2 Open Beta.  Within 5 or 10 minutes,  a slightly higher level player was attacking me/annoying me trying to trick me into going pink or whatever the inbetween color was so that they could gank me.

From my experience with DAoC in a heavily Euro guild (50/50 North America and European),  there can be as much whining and drama from Euros as Americans.  One Dutch lady was famously obnoxious,  though never to a degree to get her booted.

Right, but we are silly for we hashing this whole PvP again away.
I guess I get annoyed with every pvp thread becomes a pining for "Shadowbane, only done right" and other PvP isn't "meaningful."

Concentual pvp works.  It is gaining popularity.  Let's talk about making it better rather than dwelling on what doesn't work, again and again.

I've never heard anyone explain how "meaningful" PvP doesn't open the door to grieftastic PvP. Maybe it can be done, but as I said before it takes more smarts and talent than most people have.

For the record I am the sort of person who would enjoy meaningful PvP much more than non-meaningful PvP - if I could be protected from the 5% of people who want to ruin everyone's enjoyment.

I played zek for a long time, wow pvp for a short term. Euro, had broadband 98ish, tho no flatrate till 2000

zek - HUGE barriers, w/o a signigicant investment in guild/character = not possible to pvp. Player enforced policies. Almost no pvp being performed outside "consentual" areas (near books vs other players looking for pvp), no griefing at all (i got ksed once in 6 years - he was forced of the server in a week).

wow - no barriers. Safe exp zones, no death penalty. No player enforced policies, pvping daily, much griefing.

---

costs related to pvping = bad for actual pvp, but good for the server. Most of the zekkers didnt engage in pvp, but chose the server for the ability to do something about other players.

There's an old Peanuts cartoon where Lucy (I believe) is telling Charlie Brown about the thrilling end of a football game she saw. A team six points behind, in the last few moments of the game, on their own 10-yard line makes a magnificent quarterback run and TOUCHDOWN! Then they get the extra point and win the game.

Charlie Brown asks, "How did the other team feel?"

I code on a MUD that has the 'ultimate' in meaningful PVP - permadeath. Sure, you can reroll, but then you need to acquire skills and resources again from scratch, which isn't the easiest thing to do for newer characters, especially if you come back with an obvious chip on your shoulder. The threat of blowing months or years of character development and connections keeps most players relatively civil to each other - at least, to their face; there's no telling what people say or plot behind each other's backs.

Murderers, especially those who kill randomly, are swiftly and permanently dealt with. Inter-social-group wars are infrequent, but often bloody, events.

Granted, you can claim that since this is only a moderately sized MUD, we're selecting in favor of a more mature playerbase, since most kiddies will avoid anything with less than 20,000 boobie polys these days. Still, while words sometimes get heated, I find that actual PK is relatively rare.

While I laugh my head off from the mental image of a line of people standing in front of a spawn point for a 20 second fight once every half hour or so, that would be the point where sane people say "Screw it" and quit.

Then what's the point of having PVP?

EXP loss, dept and item loss outside of a player's control are their own discouragement.

If we all agree that the majority of WoWs playerbase were virgins to the genre when they began, then I don't think they knew what the hell PvP server really meant.

WoW arrived when I was at uni, I'l use my class as an example. We were a total of 2 people which I know had played MMORPGs before, the rest were gamers but had never tried MMORPGs before. I had already choosen a server since I already was a member of a guild before WoW arrived. I can tell you that nobody of the ones who had played no MMORPGs before really knew what a PvP server was. Something was disabled on the PvE server, while it was on at the PvP server. Most of them had played CS / Quake before and so naturaly they wanted to kill other players. So they all decided on PvP server, but what do you think happend once they had to venture outside of crossroads and get ganked on a daily basis? They whined, and I think it was clearly aparant that they disliked the element of PvP, it was geting in the way of their shiny. The fun part of MMORPGs were still the grinding for them.

If Shadowbane had been made by blizzard and have the production values of WoW, then I think it would've been really succesful. Perhaps more so than WoW, if it would have the same brand advantage as WoW. As long as you have a newbie zone and throw a virgin in there, if they get hooked to the game before they're thrown out in the "real world", then they're already addicted enough to withstand pretty much anything. What a quality Shadowbane would do better than WoW is keep players subscribed. Grinding PvE and meaningless PvP is only intresting for so long.

MUDs have another advantage with the smaller player base -- people know who you are.  They can find you.  It really helps keep people in line.

That's for sure. There's a scammer and ninja-looter on my WoW server who is legendary. And despite this, a long ban, the fact that as soon as he starts talking on the LFG or trade channels people start saying "Don't trust him he's a ninja looter, scammer, etc", people still group with him and bitch "OMG, this mage just needed that BoE blue plate helm I've been down here five times for..."

The most infamous fuck on our server, and I'd guess half the players have no idea who he is.

I do know he stopped doing PvP, because the Horde recognizes him and seems to enjoy killing him.

Hell, if Shadowbane had just WORKED, just been a working fucking product that didn't shit the bed every 5 seconds or when you looked at it funny, it'd probably be the game I'd be playing. Or I would have played it longer than WoW.

Here's the thing. Having a city that you put blood, sweat and tears into being destroyed IS NOT A FEATURE. At least not to the majority of people playing MMOG's. It's just not. Having the city is, but losing it is a feature very few people want. They want to be able to lose, not be able to be anally raped, spit upon and destroyed. I think the creators of Shadowbane didn't think about the fact that most wars, even in medieval times, did not result in nation-destruction, only a slight imbalance of the spreadsheet. It was a rare army that just wholly destroyed the losing nation completely.

Features are things like more classes to play, putting skulls on your armor as decoration, more zones.

That sounds like a good point to me.

I've got to agree with the idea that WoW doesn't prove that PvP is the dominant playstyle.  I've heard a number of conversations along the lines of player A saying they chose a PvE server because they thought being ganked was annoying, and player B countering by saying that player A is a pussy for not playing on PvP.  These kinds of responses strongly imply not that PvP is the better playstyle, but that PLAYERS who play on PvP servers are better players (more badass, tougher, etc.).  There are people on this board who've said that they prefer PvP because it's unpredictable; that's a better reason.  However, you can't separate people who chose PvP because they enjoy it as a playstyle from people who chose PvP for some other reason (they think it makes them more badass, they have delusions of being some great war hero, etc.).  And, as everyone else has mentioned, there is very little PvP penalty in WoW.  By the time you see any PvP of any kind, you're probably around level 20 or so, which is a week or two of fairly steady playing.  If you decide you don't like the PvP after all, you can either re-roll on a different server and loose all that progress (TWENTY LEVELS!  Why, I'm a third of the way to sixty!) or you can put up with the (minor) pain in the ass that is the PvP, and rationalize it by claiming that it makes you tougher than those carebear pussies on PvE.

Meaningful PvP, in the sense of EVE or (I'm told) Shadowbane, is probably still niche.  I have confidence that it can, someday, be done in such a way that it becomes somewhat mainstream, but that hasn't happened yet.  Meaningless PvP, like in WoW, I suppose you could say is mainstream, but only because it piggybacked on top of a game that has ripped the genre open.  I don't think having PvP servers has been what has made WoW the industry giant that it is, and I don't think that copying that PvP style into other games (like LOTRO) will automatically make them more successful.

I LOVE seeing these kind of arguments for PvP.  The irony behind the PvP player's statements is so delicious.  The more they insult and put down the PvE players, the more they are validating the PvE player's opinion.

Didn't people use the term in Diablo as well though?

On a tangent -- I fucking HATE duel spammers. No, I don't want to freaking duel you. Go to a goddamn battleground, and fight someone your own level. Oh, and if in ADDITION to pestering me for a duel, you say something like "No pets" or "No traps" I'm going to stick you on my ignore list for being too stupid to tolerate.

I've had level 40 guys challenge my level 10 priest to a duel. I've had level 60 rogues in full Tier 1 gear challenge my newly minted level 60 Hunter (decked to the max in his two pieces of Tier 0 gear) and then get pissy when I wiped the floor with him. (BM spec, hunter's mark, and a flame trap. I kited him to death). I don't tell him no stealth, do I?

I wonder if that sort of massive stupidity is more or less common on PvP realms.

Adding /whois and /locate will resolve that for any MMOG.  If you feel that is the only limitt to making PvP successful in a MMOG, problem solved.

I don't think it is, though.  The problem with PK isn't about the relative strength of the penalty, availability, etc - it's about consequence.  It's what keeps RL from turning into a grief-tastic UO.  Traditional PK only gives consequence to the victim - which is who exactly doesn't need it.  In some places you might argue it is, but what is well known is that a rise in consequence (law enforcement / judicial activity) corresponds in a decrease in crime.  So... give players tools to fight crime.

In smaller games (such as one permadeath game I played, with ~100-200 users total), the easy tool to fight crime is proximity.  The society will throw you out for breaking social rules, and at the 'tribal' level it has the ability to do so.  This tool is not enough at the thousand or hundred thousand mark, but being a nation of over a quarter billion hasn't caused the US to collapse.  In nature, you evolve or die; judicial tools have likewise evolved to meet changing needs.  Games, likewise, need to evolve.

An aquaintance (can't call him a friend) played WoW on a PvP server and from what he said, he got escorted through instances by guildmates most of the way up to 60. Didn't quest outside much, and stealthed around on his rogue, ambushing players in fights with PC's and already damaged. This guy isn't a kid either. He's married, early 30's, runs a successfull business. Avoiding people like this getting their jollys, no matter how painless the penalties, is what keeps me off PvP servers.

In case anyone has forgotten what "meaningful PVP" is - I encourage you to read the first post of this thread and skim the rest.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=338891

edit: a very brief summary for the people who don't play Eve.

What happened here is that ASCN blew up all of their player owned stations in the region and put up their own stations. In this area of the Eve universe, if you have stations up in a system for X ammount of time, you stake your claim in the "conquerable" NPC stations. Meaning that ASCN can set who can dock at these stations and who cannot. So basically, whatever ships and items Tribal Soul members had stored in the conq-stations are inaccessable from here on out. You don't have to store money anywhere, so they keep what money they have on hand. If, say, a guy was on vacation for a week or two and had 10 battleships here, the only way he'd get them back is if he joined an alliance to assault ASCN/AXE and claim the system or somehow join ASCN. That 2nd option seems unlikely looking at those chatlogs.

Also, they can sell the stuff they have sitting there, but people would have to go to the base to claim it.

While I enjoyed the initial post, the remaining posts surprised me.  I had higher expectations of the playerbase of this game...

I love pvp,  Battlefield Lineup, Tribes series, Age of Empire Series, Warcraft series, sports games, Starwars Battlefront, oh you mean in MMOG, sure I like Planetside.  UO sucked if you weren't ready and the same skill up level, EQ sucked on the level crap and shit class balance, AC sucked on level and template balance, Diablo II sucked untill they made it you can't get ganked (now it is okay if you are set up to pvp-if not it is more a pest), DAoC sucked because you had to wack moles for way to long to go play in RvR, Shadowbane--most clunky game I've played (I wanted to like it so much) gave up on it before leaving the newbie lands.  So what has worked?  CoH where they bring everyone up to the same level to fight and WoW battlegrounds 10-50 have been fun.  Those both aren't perfect because you can be waiting forever to get a match going.

Most MMOG'er are pussies who can't stand the idea that a person could come in who hasn't been leveling forever and kill them.  So naturally the FPS crowd is alienated from MMOG since time invested seems to be a big factor in how much power your toon has.  The idea in say a FPS that if a guy has been playing 20+hours a day gets to have a cool cannon/gun that has lasers and homing missles and killer armor that no one can shoot threw would go over like a ton of lead ballons. 

While Jimbo's analysis is basically correct (first paragraph at least), it's worth pointing out that Daoc introduced level 1-40 battlegrounds long ago.

Also, the twitch games would suck just as much as level based MMOG pvp if out-of-game mechanisms hadn't been introduced to ensure that most people end up playing people with about the same level of experience of the game most of the time.

Twitch games have a grind too, it's just a player skill grind instead of a character skill grind.

The problem with older MMOGs is that the grind was just too long, and in most cases was based on increasing absolute power of your character (Daoc, EQ, Diablo, UO) rather than increasing the variety of roles/skills available to a player - with a limitation on the number of roles/skills you can use at the same time (PS, EVE, MtG, GW).

Oh c'mon, stats didn't mean shit in UO. Wish I had that screenshot of my friend Lomax using a character named DrPepper who had 60 str, 80 int, and whatever remaining in dex defeating Kremlin CC, who was a 100 str/100 int tank mage who was thought to be the most powerful 1vs1 player ever.

I'd immediately start rolling around when I got skills in the 80s. Absolute power of your character only went so far in UO. Yeah, you only had a certain ammount of skills available to you, but so did everyone else. For awhile it was a huge checks and balances game, where there was often only one real counter for a specific attack towards you.

Then again nobody cares/knows about this because none of you really played. Insert a line from schild about "how I want to play is always the correct way to play!"

Heh, I went back to look at my old UO characters one time I resubbed.  None had a 100 skill in any major combat category and most of my stats had crap like sub 70 str.  Those characters killed many higher skill/stat players and often took on 3 to 1 or worse odds. 

I don't think I had a stat hit 100 or combat skill hit 100 until I started playing on Hokuto to grief miners.

Edit: Heh, I remember borrowing Dr. Pepper for a duel.  The other person backed out based on Dr. Pepper's rep.  The stats/skills on that character were pathetic.  Something like 90 swords/tac, 82 magery, maybe 62 resist.

Reputation in early UO was very important and player skill was a lot more important than character stats or equipment. That being said, while you could excel without GM skill having 80+ resist and GM magery helped.

What helped even more is knowing how to use your character. There was a counter to everything, while you could instantly die to exp+hally+precast ebolt it is so ridiculously easy to counter that only newbies would take dirtnaps to it.

Almost every player on my PvE WoW server (Proudmoore) participates in PvP Battlegrounds. Running around Ironforge, it seems there is hardly anyone without at least "Private" in front of their name.

I think that part of the reason why WoW PvP servers are more popular in Europe is due to the delayed launch. It launched sometime late February if I recall correctly. By then it was fairly well known from the US forums and our own open beta, that the PvE servers were kinda boring and that the PvP in WoW wouldn't cause too much trouble while leveling up.
Combined with a slightly different culture I think this could explain the big difference in popularity between PvP-PvE on US and Euro servers.

It would be interesting to know if this difference remains, or if it has lessened since launch, with all the new servers created.

Pussy.

I shine my shield with your tears.

For the record I want to offer that I find PVP to be better on WOW's PVE servers.  I have characters in their 50s on both a PVP (alliance side) and PVE (hoarde side) server. 

Case in point: world PVP.  On my PVE server, the best PVP I ever had was defending UC from a huge alliance raid.  It lasted 4 hours.  This is unheard of on my PVP server, as most people are getting to 60 so they can loiter in STV and kill lowbies.  And of course, as mentioned in this thread, so they can go back to their own starting areas and duel level 3's.

I enjoy the rush of PVP servers tho.  Once I got past giving a shit, it became great fun.  I don't camp and the karma usually comes back my way. 

But in the end, I prefer world pvp because it's (usually) more organized and tactical.  I don't care that there are no rewards, the fun is to do it and feel like a part of the event itself.

I think the PVP server guys figured out way before the PVE folks that town raids just dont work.

Thats what bums me out most about wow, the horrible lag that happens when you get 60+ people in an area. I'd probably still be playing the game if town raids were viable, they just truely arent.

I never understood the point of town raids, they mostly involved pve against endlessly spawning guards with very little pvp thrown in.  You are likely to find more action roaming around the higher level exp/quest zones than attacking some random town.

Guys, get a sizable group to raid one of the 4 major cities.  Even tho I saw it only once, it stood out as the best pvp in WoW.  The only lag I suffered was when I first entered the crowded zone, and after that it was fine.

The alliance group that raided UC got to the circular room with the coffin, up top near the elevators.  They held that position for hours.  If done right, I'm sure a good group could find a spot like this in any major city and make it last.

This is more like "war" than ganking and lolling, to say the least.

Why would they do that though? People did this type of crap the first two weeks of release then quickly realized it's a complete waste of time.

I'm glad you're just discovering things like that. Before long you'll be as bitter and cynical as I am!

You cant take over, destroy or basically do anything to a city other than annoy passersby... like i said i dont really see the point.  Wow isnt shadowbane, theres no reason to raid a city when it accomplishes nothing and i dont see how adding hundreds of guard npcs into the mix improves on the pvp you can already get in a bg.

Friend of mine will probably drag me into battlegrounds once I level up a little more.  It's something else to do, and since death means absolutely nothing, why not?  PVP attitudes haven't changed so much as the PVP being presented has.

Death means nothing. Great. I can side with people on that a bit.

But winning doesn't mean much either -- unless you're a catass (raiders are hardly catasses in comparison). And winning definitely means nothing outside the BG's.

I have more fun playing DotA (http://www.dota-allstars.com) than I *ever* had in WoW battlegrounds. I've dragged a few friends in and they're all but abandoned their WSG/AB/AV romps.

It's really absurd to make that comparison. First of all, player skill is not a "grind." A lot of people who play constantly aren't very good and a lot of people who are very good don't play constantly.  Also, being good at one action or strategy game is more or less a value that is transferable to other action or strategy games.

In an MMORPG, if you're level 25 and the other guy is level 60, it doesn't matter if you're the best gamer in the world. There's no context in which you can defeat him. You can show up with ten level 25 friends and he'll probably waste all of you.  And when you mix that with a situation where he can mug you, you end up not with "meaningful pvp" but a system where the server is terrorized by invincible thugs who destroy the game for everyone else. Getting to loot someone's shit after you stab them in the back while they're fighting a monster doesn't make PvP "meaningful." It just makes griefing a profitable occupation.

And where the PvP is based on holding territory, the problems of a persistent world interfere with the game being fun.  No matter how dedicated you are, it's not viable for most people to make defending their virtual turf their primary occupation, which means that the guy who rallies his team to overwhelm your defenses at 4 in the morning obviously has an advantage that isn't based on anything resembling player merit.

I totally understand that many people's desires for PvP manifest a desire to play "bad guys" or "outlaws" in a system that's governed by rules that are structurally impossible to  transgress, rather than a system where wrongs are possible and must be punished. I think games should provide players with an option to play as an in-game criminal or griefer, but if they do this, there has to be a significant disincentive to do so. If you just let stronger players mug weaker players and then go about business as normal, it's just open season, and it stops being fun to play for the vast majority of people.

On another note, I think it would be a lot of fun if a game took advantage of the social aspects of MMOs to create interactions among players that are more interesting and complex than "I stab you."