f13.net

Just wondering.
I'd like to know which MMO game gave your best PvP experience so far. And, of course, why.

Please note I am not asking for a fair opinion on it. I could say that Game A PvP was great but I for some reason enjoyed Game B more. This is not about which game you think had the best PvP.
Just which one gave you the best experience (or the best memories if you like).

I will go first, and I have to say Ultima Online since 1997 to 1999.
I never ever felt the same sense of danger and uncertainty of those old days.
It was so great to venture in a forest knowing that my char's life and possessions were on the line every time.
It was so great to live the bluff of "robed" characters, without having a safe way to know if they were newbies or strong ones.
It was so great to have to group and to confront other guilds or "packs of PKs" with all the hide and seek play.. the chasing in the forests, the scouting, the stalking in the dungeons, the ambushes. Back in the days we didn't use Teamspeak nor there were /tells in game.. We relied on ICQ for what it was worth, but basically we had to use the GAME to communicate. So we used to shout to keep communicating with guildees during a PK crisis... it felt so true, so authentic. It felt more war than any Battlefield, Planetside, Call of Duty or anything I ever played. I used to play PvP in UO like there wasn't a tomorrow, like everything was on the line and like my Char's life was its only life. And yes, back then it was great for me. And I have yet to feel such strong thrills in a videogame.

It was a mixture of low-technology, high-hostility and uber noobness (everyone was a noob, after all). But still, it was something truly unique for me. Not sure if those memories are repeatable, probably not, regardless of the game and the PvP mechanics. Still, I feel that no matter the ganking or the crybabes, my best PvP experiences are tied to the days when the equipment I worked 2 months to get was gone in a single well timed ambush, or the days when I collected the bounty for one of the most wanted Murderer of the server almost without knowing it and got so much money that I did finally bought the house I always wanted but couldn't afford. :)

What about you?


P.S: ("Search is your friend...". Yes, I did a search for a similar topic and didn't found one. If it's there and I couldn't find it, please ban me forever, send me to hell... or just give me the custom title "Double Poster Extraordinaire")

Yeah....There was a thread about this once. I'm too lazy to post my favorite experience, but I will say my favorite PvP moments are when Lore, RP, PvE, and PvP just 'click'. It had happened a few times in Shadowbane (and once at epic proportions, resulting in Wolfpack destroying my city...Which is not as bad as it sounds), and there was even a funny moment I had in WoW once.

It might just be better to necropost the old thread.. since it's been done before.

I like fair fights. Guild Wars has given me the most fair fights.

Nothing has really come close to PlanetSide for me.

I'd have to say Shadowbane in beta, though I can't really pinpoint an exact moment. It was most certainly before the 3.5 beta patch that fucked PVP all to hell and back (as well as destroyed the frame rate), probably about the time I helped lead the House Daenyr forces halfway across the world to siege a city on a Saturday morning. We didn't take the city, but damn was it amazing to watch all those catapults tossing off shots.

Of course, there's also that assualt in SB when House Daenyr tried to destroy those green and white crested fucker's city after release. That was pretty damn good too, other than the 15 SB.exe's that plagued me on the march there.

SWG. Starsider.  Operation SEIGE, around Feb '04.

Basically involved getting a mole high enough into a Rebel guild to grant zoning rights to their city (the biggest/most popular Rebel city at the time).  Then dropping a half-dozen imperial bases and some priviate safe-houses and enjoying a 24/7 warzone for about a month.

Things like that were possible in SWG? Darn, when?
Where was I?
Al ready gone, probably. But still!

My favorite experience has been documented in Lum's excellent book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471752738/002-8848374-2809649?v=glance&n=283155).

I remember that march. I felt so bad for you, right up until I had an sb.exe myself.

Can't say I've had any 'memorable' experiences in MMOs.  I enjoy fair fights, not ganks and the PVP scene these days just don't provide that often.  I really enjoy WoW's BGs if I can get into a group where folks aren't concerned with their # of kills more than the objectives.  If I had to pick, I'd say WoW, AB or AV are some of the best with Planetside about 3 years ago being second.

If you broaden it past MMOs, America's Army was the best PvP experience I've ever had.  The objectives aren't just "kill the other side."  So one or two wily players were often able to win a match while the other team was just trying to wipe you out and not covering objectives.

Some of the GW stuff was pretty hot, especially when BC was stilll running strong in that game....we would have gone to the championship match if our special NPC hadn't gotten trapped under the map's architecture.

Hmm, in WoW my cow warrior won a 3v1 once. That was pretty hot. Also, many of my Gnomish Death Ray kills were funny. My cow was fun to PvP with....until I hit 51.

Shill.

Anyway... SB in beta with Haemish and Co.  Good times, that... well, until the good times started going bad.  There there were bad times which got worse.  Then I wandered off. 

Quiet, Feet!  :-D

First day in UO will never be topped. Just the awe of the whole thing. I don't think much happened other than my character got killed by a giant spider. I didn't get PKed for at least a month, too.

Oddly enough, mine was probably in WoW, ambushing Alliance carebears in Stranglethorn.  Normally I am not on the winning side in a PVP engagement, hehe.  I expect to have some great stories from EVE after a while.

Stop calling me Feet!  You people have made it so I can't change my avatard, too!  Oh how I grumbed!

Defenetly UO.

First the Tank Mage days, then then thief archer days. Precastering was awesome.

No game will ever again give the feel that UO had.

Pinnacle: Old school UO, ive rattled on about this enough in past threads. Lets just say there is no substitute, at least hasnt been one yet.

Excellent experiences: Neocron outpost battles. Yeah the game had its problems, but when you had a 10 on 10 fight it that game, it was war. No instant heals, the PSI monks had to 'start heals' and use their deflectors and shelters well. All the while nuking the piss out of other targets. Neocron 1 vrs 1 field PVP was hot too, you could actually lose something or gain items if you won. Neat concept. Strange that I find the best PVP involves risk...go figure...Maybe because there is something actually at stake, that you worked for? You could actually gain something? We'll have to look into the concepts more someday. ;)

Shadowbane: My first sb.exe siege, all the guilds on Mourning allied for a day or 2 to wipe the ARAC scum Denied off the map. Selling runes for $20 (were runes),$ 50 (travellers) , and $75-100 (commander) was just icing on the cake.

Planetside: Huge ass Cyssor battles FTW.

WoW: Random world PVP was always exciting. I was a server legend for my priestliness in TM/ SS battles. :)

I'm having a lot of fun with random pirate hunting in EVE, even if I do die most of the time. The thrill of knowing my ship could go kaboom at any moment is good, even if it frustrates me sometimes.

My first PvP experience was on a MUD called Kobra - a Star Wars based MUD with full factions and BHs and Jedi and personal combat droids. Total blast. I remember playing Kobra while in the computer lab at school (something you aren't suppose to do) and having my friends and I ganked by this high ranking BH who used droids to trap us in this space station and totally jacked us up. Yelling and swear words galore until the computer teacher turned off the computers.  :-D

Also had great PvP experiences in SWG until they put in the bases. Was a lot of fun until folks started using glitches and the group-kill flag stuff to gank folks. I remember being the lone flagged Imperial soldier in one of the Rebel cities, running around with my BH title on. Couple of flagged rebel noobs decided they could take me (even though I was completely ignoring them and just passing through) and both ended up getting sent to the cloning facility after getting shot in the face with my scatter pistol. Ahh those were the days.

I enjoyed the PvP in Guild Wars, since it is much more even, but I like chance encounters much more. Chasing a pirate around a system (in EVE) to force him into a bad spot is a lot of fun .. until he logs off and you have effectively just spent over an hour warping around. But! That one time you catch them off guard and totally paste his Battlecruiser in your cheapo Cruiser, it's all worth it.

My best PvP moment was when we did "PvP training" in beta 3.1 with House Daenyr and split into two groups. I had perfected the overpowered defense build on a crusader, and after the rest of my team had been eliminated (too many fragile casters), I was faced with a five against one smackdown. It took Haemish, Jory and others a full ten minutes to kill me, during which time I killed two of them. In fact, it it hadn't been for Jory's overpowered attack build on his ranger, I'd have had that fight.

Needless to say, Wolfpack put in a fix to prevent people from building the extreme defense template that I'd created, as well as a fix for Jory's ranger template.

My "best" experience was early in UO beta phase 2. This pretty much cemented me as a 'bad guy' for eternity. At this point in the game, Vesper was a hotspot for dueling fags, and at this point in my life I honeymooned as a dueling fag. I had fought a ton so I had a REP. I also posted a bunch on various forums, although I can't specifically remember where this guy knew me from.

Anyways, I was hopping moongates looking for the right place (this was when it took 20-30 hops to get to a specific place - you'd go from Trinsic to Yew 15 times before getting Minoc/Vesper) and there was a guy at one of them who said "Hey stop". I had already gated, but I held up and he appeared at the next gate. "Are you the infamous Nija?" "Yeah" "You don't look so tough." "Well, let's wander about 20 steps north and we can see who is tough"

At the time I was in FULL GEAR. This was when you stacked clothing to get bonus AR, and I was wearing an incredible ammount of shit. Female leather armor, jester suit, tunic, chainmail, plate, etc. Covered on top with a robe and an apron. I'm sure those who played remembered this ridiculous getup. Anyways, my tool at the time was a .... Shit I forget. The big two handed hammer. Sledge maybe? Big slow thing that hit like a truck.

This guy who was fighting me was a sword/board guy with a viking sword heater shield setup, platemail, obviously a tough guy. I go into attack mode and click him a few times, then toggle out of attack mode so I don't hit him yet. He tears into me, doing hardly any damage, and I tab back to attack mode so it looks like I'm trying to kill him. We circle for about 30 seconds, and he's got me down to about 60% health. In UO pvp terms this was an ETERNITY. "is that all you've got, pussy?"

Drag the sledge to backpack
explosion
drag sledge back to paper doll
double click

Guy goes from 100% health to 10% health in about, oh, 2 seconds. His character SPUN AROUND on the screen as he was trying to figure out which way to run. I tabbed out of combat just to watch him run into trees and underbrush as he sprinted towards the moongate.

There's no need to finish a guy in that situtaion. I'd already looted something much more precious than his belongings, so to speak. Over the years I've had 'better' actual encounters, but that's what started me down PEEKAYER path. Hell, I started as an Anti/policeman type guy in Meridian 59.

Some of my best were in DAoC BG mosh pits, but running the Frontiers to protect/rescue outposts and re-siege them was big time fun.

However.

Some of the large scale battles in early SWG Live were also up there.  The old Bestine vs. AH battles were thrilling.  Honestl.  Ok, I was drunk.  Boba Feet.

Damn, I totally forgot about the PVP training. Good times.

I agree with Haemish. SB was probably the best back in the beta days when battles were epic, spies were everywhere, and you didn't feel like quitting the game if your city got burned down.

DAOC PVP was pretty fun too, but the PVE grind sucked.

I have talked about Neocron before, and completely concur with Slayer.  Especially on the Hardcore server; a persons actions would follow him (good or bad) from beyond the shortterm.  Outpost battles were great, and the reputation system was the bees knees.  I recently went back (I think I posted about it) and was completely sickened by the changes to what made the game great.

UO was best for me because I felt like I had a chance at PvP in that game.  Items didn't matter as much, it just took time at actually fighting to get good.  You had to get past the jitters you'd get when indecision hit in a tough spot.  Eventually, you got to a point where you felt confident and could go into your typical attacks or defenses depending on the situation.  You could surprise your opponent with a unique attack combo or be surprised by one.  I always learned something new.

I had a few good experiences in SB in large scale battles, but too often I was at the raw end of a gank while trying to level.  Cockblock of 60 levels of crappy PvE just to compete was just assinine.

That's it exactly. Zisa Peen used to have a chubby for attacking our city in the middle of the night. We'd often log on and find a smoking pile of ruins on one side of the city or another (there were no silly rules to discourage "ninja raids" nor was there a need for any), and it would take just a couple of us a few minutes of hunting in the bog to get enough loot to rebuild and level everything back up again (especially if uber-wizard Rhuaglar was one of the gold farmers). Unfortunately Wolfpack gave in to the people who demanded to be able to "win the game" and decided that it should take longer to level up buldings and much much longer to farm loot. The game was reduced to one where the catasses who could PvE grind the longest had the greatest ability to wage war. The "winners" of Shadowbane in release were those with a stupidly high boredom threshold.

Or the discipline to herd everyone into AFK macro leveling groups.

I ended up in my fair share of those. ACtool-4tw!

UO and I have to give props to WOW for at least providing a better random feel to PvP.

Mine was in Star Wars Galaxies. I think that says enough about PvP in MMOGs.

Another vote for 2004-era SWG city vs city wars.

EQ1 guild vs guild PvE was also a kind of good PvP. Nothing quite as evil as steamrolling some other guild's raid and taking loot that won't be back for a week.

The big, even fights of zerg vs. zerg vs. zerg in DAoC.  Field littered with the dead,  all screaming for rezzes, lines of opposing players all trying to get back mana for another rezz/heal/nuke.  8-mans crashing in to lead a rush and drive back the opposing side.

Whichever realm weakest playing the spoiler.

Or knowing one of the million dupe bugs that where in that game.  Everytime i read stuff like this i keep thinking "huh, people farmed?", there was always someone around with billions of gold.

Year one of Asheron's Call. 

My best friend and I bought copies together on release day.  We were roomates, and played over a mini-lan.  We started toons on Darktide, the one and only PvP server, which just so happened to be FFA. (Commonly referred to as "the red server" dun dun dun!) 

So began ye great olde time of horrible death by a (flaming) cestus weilding maniac(s), mages wearing full length robes with bastinet style helms on their heads and carrying crossbows, and being scared to go into town but you MUST BUY A SACK.  Yes, having a "mule" was literally having a level 3 dude named Dumpster that would log on/off at coords X,Y east asscrack to pickup your Santa-style sacks of lewt in relative safety.  I didn't mind the cross country running though since I had a 327 Run Skill. 

Le sigh, those were the days.


P.S. - Being able to punk your friends at any time for comedic reasons: WIN.

I'd have to say UO, but I don't remember any particular moment. Plus I never played on the official servers, so I prolly played some weird ass version of UO noone else did :) We always had Order vs Chaos tho, and that was major fun.

EVE has awesome PvP, but I still don't have that moment where you overcome overwhelming odds and just feel like you're the shit.

WoW brought some amazing open world pvp back in the day when there were no battle grounds. Me (Arcanite Reaper cheese ms warrior) and a friend ( dorf imba fearward priest) used to camp the roads to Scholomance in wpl and Stratholme in epl. There were two times where we killed a whole horde raid going for one of those instances. We later got bored and rerolled two druids on another server. For a week when we were going from 30 to 40 we were the kings of STV. There were times where more than 10-15 alliance were "traping" us, and we were killing half and running away.

Conducting and leading a fallback out of a a doomed town in WW2OL, planning, excauting and finishing the counter attack, and rolling over the german defenders so well that we took the next took forward. Getting the air cover, air support, artillary, trucks, tanks and infantry (of players who are ussally as well co-ordinated as a barrel full of baby monkeys) working so well together it's like a muscial number.  One I rembember best was a north of Eindhoven, Boxtel and then kicking the germans out of Veghal afterwards. Calling in an air stike which was on time, on station and on target just as the tanks roll in to the army base and the infantry smoke the bunker.

Only possible in the last year or so, due to the increased amount of players you can track of, couldn't really "feel" as atmospheric as it can sometimes these days. And you won't get a WOW game like it because PvP where evreyone's playing a FPS just is not goint to happen.

Not very commen, and I havn't seen it happen in Eve yet, though I hope to one day. Though I have doubts anything like it is possible in Eve because the loses have too much to lose. WW2OL, a new rifle costs the *player* nothing, while losing a battlecruiser would hurt a lot. More relaistic (run away to be able to fight another day instead of "fight to the last bullet and last spawnable infantryman), but not as satisfing I suspect.

Planetside. Hands down, no question, no debate, no hesitation.   

The standard click-wait-click of most MMOs works fine for PvE combat, since AI for MMOs is still crude.  But against a living, thinking opponent, I want action.  I want an FPS/RTS mechanic, not a RPG one.  And I don't want a game where losing a PvP fight means you have to engage a timesink to replace your losses: that is for suckers.

Planetside me some spectacular hopes for MMOFPS and 18 months of gameplay: it might not have been perfect, but it was good.  Definitely the best thing SOE ever ran.

You played Kobra?? Amazing :). I was a wizard (called Jedi on Kobra) there for a couple of years, in the Force. I just googled it, and it appears it is still running. If you ever went to Kessel, got a black stormtrooper armor set or hiked with an annoyingly chatty cabdriver, that was me.

Anyway, best PvP experience was probably AO, when Notum Wars hit and everyone scrambled to get a decent area to put up those towers. Also, I was a scout for the strange Minotaur RP city north of Haemish & CO in Shadowbane beta. I think we were mostly peaceful to you, although I remember sneaking into your town now and then. Right now, Eve is fun, although I'm on the receiving end of PvP so far.

I'd say DAOC, the first time I ever walked up to an Albion castle and plopped down a ram I'd made to shatter the doors. Then going inside, pillaging the place and repairing up the doors again like mad. We lasted about an hour in there before things went all to hell, but it was a great time of pvp and excitement that has yet to be copied in WoW. I look forward to it if they ever release siege weapon huge world frontier style BGs.

I enjoyed it a great deal before people starting farming rps in Emain.  I wasn't fond of the changes New Frontiers brought, either.  Realm Abilities just changed things too much, I think also.

As is mine.

But for overall game, it's a tough call.  I think the PvP in Guild Wars is better balanced, more skillful, and overall more fun than the PvP in DAoC. However, DAoC's had a gravity, a meaning, to it that Guild Wars lacks.  I was really, really invested in fights when they occured in DAoC.

If someone could take Guild Wars' system and make it as meaningful as it was in DAoC, I'd be in Heaven.  They could even call it "Heaven Online".

Damn man. I remember when you just came out nowhere, started making not-so-worthless posts......Even became a blue name. All in short time. And now you're telling you're in Lum's book too?

I resent that.  I never made a not-so-worthless post in my life.

(But yeah, back when he made the thread asking us for our favorite PvP experiences, he took from that for the book.)

EDIT

I'm wrong, it wasn't PvP experiences he asked for. Just MMO experiences.  Most just happened to involve PvP.

For me it goes 100% to UO.  The feeling that you might be being "watched" while you were fighting that mob.  The feeling that at any moment people can show up and try to kick your ass is legendary.  Plus having my own house stock full of rares/loot/and who knows what else was great!  Someone got loaded with lots of rares when I quit UO.  UO was just pure carnage (until they put in craptastic Trammel).

Shadowbane gave me quite a few glimpses into my old UO days.  I was very well known on the Fear server as the dual wielding throwing hammer barbarian (name was Chinchilla DaKilla).  The only bad part about Shadowbane was all the damn politics.  I didn't go to school to become a politician for a reason.

At least I necro myself. PvP still has a spot (let's say two... or more) in my heart, and I found this article (http://www.notaddicted.com/forums/showthread.php?t=683) today.
Best PvP article ever. Comments (and anedoctes between those) included.

Makes me drop a tears or two as I know those days will never come back...

A sample: (about the EQ Discord server, the only one ever as I know of with PermaDeath):

Sitting in a crane sniping with a machine gun and then a pistol in BF2. Then watching a commander drop arty and seeing a body fly up in the air to the same level I was at.

I have had a few close calls in the past nine months of EVE, but since I am an industrialist my combat PvP encounters generally result in me losing a ship.  I have dabbled with a combat character and I generally feel that the PvP implementation in EVE is better than UO-at-release.  The biggest reason for this is that I always know what I did wrong when I lose my ride or die in EVE.

Now, for non-combat PvP in EVE I think my favorite times are the ones where I perform an outstanding low-buy or high-sell.  Buying bulk items at one-tenth or one-twentieth market value just makes me all warm inside.  It's also tremendous fun to warp my mining barge into a highsec asteroid belt and hoover up all of the rocks from underneath some mining frigates.  That makes people mad.

Heh. That was classic.



I wish the all the folks working on  upcoming games take would take heed. PvP can be a hell of a lot of fun if you can balance it right.

PlanetSide has been by far my best PvP MMO experience.

For me it was shadowbanes second expansion beta.  The population was so low by that point that roughly a third or more of the player base got into the beta and instantly divided along server lines.  Finally all those years of cross server trash talking finally came to a head as vengeance nation and mourning after faced off.  Fighting side by side with the same assholes ive been fighting against for years for nothing other than server bragging rights and finally tearing down mourning servers triple walled city after a few short weeks made that beta the most memorable pvp experience for me.

I was in a DAOC RvR guild from go-live for about 8 months.

The one I recall best was a massively organized prime-time relic raid with massive numbers on both sides.

We were Albion and hit all the Hib keeps at the same time, with yet another big group trying to block the defenders from entering the zone.

We took down all the keeps, and headed to the relic keep, took down the outer and  inner doors before the Hibs showed up in mass.  At that point so much lag set in, I could not even get my character up the steps to the relic.  We never did get it before being defeated.

Ultima Online, just last year.

I was in an RP guild, and we had some "allies" that weren't very helpful.  They roleplayed Drow (automatic points against in my book, but I wasn't making guild policy) and considered themselves "gatekeepers" of the incestuous little roleplay community on that shard.  Their roleplay appeared to consist entirely of standing around acting like arrogant asshats at every meeting, being as obstructionist as possible when anyone outside of their clique suggested anything, never showing their faces in PVP or anywhere outside of a meeting, and conspiring to split up our guild.

Oh man, they thought they were smart.  Little did they know that as they were trying to subvert some of our officers, we were taking screenshots and laughing our asses off.  We even played into it, with the GM killing one of the officers in question in an apparent fit of rage, while actually joking with the guy about it in Ventrilo.  Now normally I'm a huge carebear, but this wasn't some random d00d trying to gank me and steal my muffins.  These guys were pissing me off with their Drowish faggotry, snobby roleplayer attitudes, and general uselessness.  I was the first one to suggest that we quit playing detective and just fucking kill them.

Now their guild wasn't actually physically allied to ours, so we couldn't attack them in Trammel.  But strangely enough, they wanted to hold the next meeting at one of their houses, in Felucca.  We more than happily agreed, and left our snazzy uniforms behind in favor of fighting gear.  Ah, but these guys only wanted our officers to accompany them to Felucca.  The rest of us were supposed to stay behind.  Nevertheless, when the gate opened, all two dozen of us poured through it, much to their dismay.

Thinking ahead, one of our mages quickly marked a rune outside the house, and handed it to our GM.  This turned out to be critical, because once the officers were inside, the owner of the house set the doors and teleporters to "friends only" status.  That meant that non-friends were technically allowed to be inside the house, but in reality had no simple way of getting in.  So we all formed a big line outside of the house and waited.

They really didn't want us there.  They told us they had seen some people from the shard's big PK guild in the area.  We stuck around anyway and didn't see shit.  They told us to go ahead to some other spot and wait for them.  We stayed where we were.  I have to figure maybe they were planning to gank our leaders, based on their holding the meeting in Felucca and not wanting all our guys there.

In any case, our leader finished saying whatever he had to say to them, concluded with "And now I'm afraid you all have to die!" or something like that, and cast a gate to the location marked directly outside the house.  All of us poured through it and went on the attack before anyone knew what the hell hit them.  See, you can ban people from your house, but only while you're alive.  We smeared them quickly enough that they only had time to ban a handful of us.  The rest of us looted everything on their corpses, laughed hysterically, and then we all recalled out.

We posted screenshots of their lame attempts at skullduggery, our laughing at said attempts, and the kill itself.  And that was pretty much the last we had to do with the faggy roleplay community on that shard.

Ah Velturus, if the vagaries of the internet ever bring this story to your attention, know that while our guild has spread out and moved on between different shards and games, we all still talk.  And we still laugh about how we buttfucked your wannabe-schemer ass.  You dumb fuck.

 :-D

So... how long did you guys actually last in Planetside?

You can't really blame him...I was | | this close to posting a link to Lum's book, but decided to go back and reread the earlier posts at the last minute  :-D

I was just being a snarky bastard but.. I didn't last very long in PlanetSide.  I'm just aweful at FPS games and if I'm going to play a FPS, I don't want to have to hunt around for the best action. 

UT2K4 was a better experience, until they expected me to actually go buy the game.

Haha, I guess I should actually start paying attention to what thead I'm posting in?  :nda:

And I played for about ... maybe a year and a half? It lasted me quite a while.

My question was out of genuine interest (not to be snarky).  I really liked the way planetside was implemented, but it didn't really hold my attention long.  I just wondered if that sentiment was shared.

Deciding to Shadow Word: Pain-Fear-kite a lone warrior to his death with our two undead priests while holding the Stables, just because we could. At that moment I knew that we had beaten the alliance team.

Early On:

UO definately great stuff, until I became a counselor on Baja, I still enjoyed being a Red on Pacific back then but spent a lot more time in my counselor role, it was just really fun porting all over, seeing different communities, seeing the game from a global scale, PVP included.

EQ was good Necro PVP fun in a anti-pvp guild (remember those?) that same guild Ive been with like 10+ years now.

DAOC, were the dominating Mid guild, those great massive relic raids on prime time or the stealth raids at 4 am on a sunday on Galahad.....just awesome stuff....houndreds of players...man I loved solo PVP on my hunter back then too, that was awesome.

SWG was overall my best most engaging experiance, both as a member of one of the top PVP imperial guilds on Ahazi and as a pre-pub 9 Guardian, for individual PVP.

At one point my guild destroyed every rebel base on the server over a month and a half....people litterally stopped placing them.

As an early Jedi, even though I dislike games with godmode, being in that situation, with saber TEF, and only 3 lives to live (permadeath) now thats pretty much hardcore mode every time you log in it could be your last time you see that toon....that you killed yourself grinding.

And there was litterally no comparable feeling Ive ever had in a game than when a BH (pre-9 and even through the CU) or a group of BH, and later a group of BH and thier rebel Jedi friend came gunning for you.....thats serious adreniline...

Out in the middle of endor, you see a probot droid (sometimes the game mechanic worked actually) following you and you knew you were going to have a little action, and sometimes they just showed up....out of no where....

Some of those BH were so damn good too....I mean some of them you just feared them even as a guardian (and with a BH main) just because you know they had skills. But most...eh....90% were sent to the cloner, unless there were like 8 of em on you back in saber tef days.

I stayed in SWG until NGE, woulda stayed until they shut those servers down but mmm well *shrug* that was a galaxy far far away.....

WOW, I have yet to have anything more than a moment of above average PVP experiance. And god knows Ive tried...

http://wotmud.org/ - Best memories for all the reasons that people liked UO. Evil raids on the newbie town were fascinating to watch as a newb. I finally hit 20 after weeks of half-assed playing and did a little dance on  the road with a trolloc who retreated down a path with a pile of trollocs mobs and one fade mob. I enjoyed the pursuit and the intelligence that my opponent demonstrated. Later, with a different low int RP newb character, I took out a newbie trolloc some high-level PvP player had rolled on a lark and taken down to Caemlyn. I was in the habit of killing deer by yelling "Narf!" and going berserk on them, eliminating the possiblity of retreat, and I did the same against the trolloc. I've never scraped out a win in a fight I'd expectedly to lose so badly before or since.

Eve - I've actually won some PvP fights, including a 2v1 that I didn't initiate, but so far nothing that has been truly epic. The best memory I have was when CHSN gave up sov in Tribute. I was docked in a conquorable station in Tribute when Dusk and Dawn took over the region. When I logged in, D2 owned the station and I had lost docking rights, fitting rights, and cloning facility rights. I waited until the afternoon and undocked to make a run for it, thinking that they'd tire of running their gatecamps, but no. I got podded, so I lost my clone, and I couldn't buy another while I was in a D2 station. At that point, something real was on the line: 5% of the skills I'd spent the last 3 months training. F13 tried asking for a 24-hour NAP to get our hangars and ships out of there, but they didn't bite. I waited a few more nights for the action to die down and bought a shuttle to fly out. I got out without taking any hits. Fun! I have never been quite as scared by a game before making that run with any intel on gatecamps nor as pumped by a game after completing it successfully. Flying point through a hostile-infested pipe in Great Wildlands with all of F13's blueprints in Yoru's cargo bay was also a blast.

I'd have to say there are two equal "best" experiences I've had. As much as I hate to admit it, one of them was on the PvP Diety server in EQ1, Sullen Zek I think it was. I was a low level good druid out with a group of relatively the same level from my guild. We went out to hunt mobs and in the middle of this realized that a group of evils was in the same building. Spent the next 20 or 30 minutes with our two groups ducking in and out of rooms, trying to keep the ravening hordes of mobs off of our own group, trying to rez fallen party members mid combat, etc all while trying to lure eachother's groups into the most unfavorable rooms to fight in. In between the smaller engagements there was a lot of tension, where we knew the other group could be around the corner waiting for us or trying to sneak around to a door behind us.

Fighting for "control" of different zones (zones with docks, the mobs we want to hunt, anything really) was an amazing experience.

The other was in DAoC. I was in the BGs right after they came out with my low level (see a trend here?) Ranger in a full PUG. While scouting out a good location to ambush from, we found a group of Mids doing the exact same thing... battle ensues. I'm not really sure what it was about that battle, but it was an exhilerating experience. I just remember flashbacks of it, standing on the top of a hill with bow drawn, people running in every which way around me. One second I'm watching a huge Troll chase down a Lurikeen, the next I see a stray fireball connect with a skinny caster knocking him out of the game. All the while trying to snipe important members of their group while protecting our own (Not much different from a regular fight). It was the amazing ambience that did it for me here combined with the fact that it wasn't a one-sided fight (Somehow both groups managed to have zero mezzers so there was no one just sitting around doing nothing for minutes at a time).

Boils down to: Back and forth fighting, combined with amazing ambience wins the day. For me at least.

This is not to say the form of PvP those games had was the best, those were just two amazing experiences. For me, even DAoC lost a little bit with nothing to lose except travel time.

Medievia - the MUD.

Some great times in the CPK (lose experience, can be looted) areas of that game. Some great times in just the normal PK ones too.

I've had some ok times in WoW, back before BGs were in the game. Fondest was probably a long duel I fought with a group of enemies while passing through the mountains near wetlands. It was fun because the area was new to me at the time, and thus felt less game-like and more world like, and fun because I was being hunter by a few and managed to prevail (back when warlocks sucked!).

Had a good time in Achaea too, now that I remember. Stole the whole bank account from one of the cities there and fled to another one. Was hunted by everyone in my old city whenver I logged on. Eventually they got me and I got owned, but the chase was what made it fun.

But PvP w/o real consequences can never come close though... as much as I'm looking forward to Arena battles in WoW: TBC, and as much as I had some good times in Guild Wars beta, it just doesn't have the same feel. Fun, sometimes just as fun. But no "world" feel to it.

Some awesome times in BF2, too. But that's not a MMO...

I can second that - playing in 'instanced' games certainly doesn't feel the same. I enjoy CounterStrike and BF2 and GuildWars, but I don't get the adrenaline rush like I do when trying to run away from some pirates in my brand new Tech2 Assault Frigate ($$$) that I hadn't fitted for fighting yet. Or when hunting pirates and trying to trap them in a system and catch them off guard. Something is missing in those instance-type games .. and I think it's because there's a big RESET button and everyone starts over.

If poker had a big RESET button and everyone got to start over with the money they originally had, no one would be all that excited about it either.

"Best MMO PvP experience", eh?

Well, these aren't exactly MMOs, but I'd go with Battletech MU* and online Battletech Sims as one of my favorite forms of online PvP.   Especially when they've got some economics in place behind the action.  Second would be Guild Wars simply because of it's tactical sophistication and control of population keeping things fair.

Planetside would be the first true MMO PvP I can say I really enjoyed, but as I said, I've a requirement of the game having population control to keep things fair.  Planetside doesn't have such a control, and as such victory is actually more of a popularity contest most of the time.  This is the reason why I can't say I like most MMO PvP scenarios.

Oh Planetside! We knew ye well.

I played planetside from very early closed beta up until release, skipped a few months, then returned for about a year. After a while you were just playing to hang out on vent, shoot the shit, and try to make it onto those third party leader boards that people started to make (with all kinds of cool stats robbed from the servers).

But Planetside... can't call that my best online PvP moment. I mean, it was laggy, ahead of it's time, and had some significant issues of balance at almost every stage of it's conception. As fun as knifing people with an infiltrator and making global chats to organize a beamer-only defense of a tower (12 cloaked infiltrators killing a scattermax with beamers is some funny shit. we made a vanguard run away too. AP mode ftw.) I can't call it my favorite.

Nope, best PvP moment was probably Discord server for Everquest. I've never been so fucking paranoid in my life. I eventually figured out that I could make a dwarf rogue, get up to level 12 or so in butcherblock then move to the less populated Ocean of Tears. I named myself LongJohnSilvers, threw in a healthy dose of sarcastic roleplaying, and joined a group of players who were playing exclusively in OoT. Since I was a melee class, I could use my skills on the boat. Mages (the flavor of the server, since they kick the most ass at low levels) could not.

So I'd log out in the belly of the boat, just before it arrived at freeport or butcherblock, then log back in 10 minutes or so later. The boat would be out in the middle of the ocean, no safety in sight. The people on the boat figured "Ok, I've made it onto the boat. I've checked the whole boat out, theres no one here to kill me. I'm safe."

Then out of nowhere (shifting back and forth and warping like crazy because that boat has been buggy ever since EQ beta), my pirate dwarf backstabs his victim! They start to freak out, running all over the boat warping around trying to avoid me. I give chase, while shouting things like "ARRR TRY MY DEEP FRIED SHRIMP POPPERS. THEY'RE TO DIE FOR!"

Eventually my victim would die, and I'd loot all their crap, or they'd jump overboard and I'd have to decide if they were weak enough for me to jump off and finish them. Getting in the water was dangerous since they could start to fight back.

Anyway, that was pretty much the most fun I've ever had PvPing.

Boat story sounds very much like griefing to me, not that there is anything wrong with it in my book. I personally prefer pwn of a clean fight but won't put creative ways of killing deserving people past me. Long ago in UO I managed to get a key to a house of a guy that would frequently PK my miner. I cleaned his house, leaving only single chest behind with deadly poison trap and a book named "if you can read this you are dead in 1.2.3" inside. Most fun I had PvPing was probably scout wars early in SB history, honorable mentions goes to kicking OPP ass in Occlo Pacific with my old crew.

It was griefing... but on a hardcore pvp server where there was a population of level 20+ people running around with ShowEQ to see everyone in the zone and PK them as soon as they hit level 6 (sending them back to level 1 with no gear).

The majority of players who did this played Mages, and if they made the mistake of getting on the boat, I could kill (or at least make them jump into the ocean) at level 15 or so against their level 20+.

So yes, griefing, but in the context it fit the server attitude and it was damn funny and creative I think.

For straight, non-grief PvP, my favorite game would probably be Lineage 2. Nothing compared to the first few months of Chronicle 1 when there were no known siege tactics. Being one of the people involved in developing the first siege tactics on my server was really cool. Going out to the siege fields the night before with the clan leaders and drawing lines on the ground with gold to show where our armies should line up, where our siege camps should be, and how we should defend against attackers. It was like playing an RTS except with real people, and the person in control of all the units could only be successful if his units listened to his orders very carefully and were disciplined to not act on their own ideas, but rather follow his.

One of my best online experiences i think, no other MMO has felt quite like "real battle" as that did. Even with all the explosions and fear of death in WWIIOL, L2 felt much more like a real war just because of the scale of battle, and the way the troops moved together.

I was the same way.  I felt 'done' with it in beta, (month and a half, I forget). and cancelled my preorder.   Nothing wrong with the game per se, just that I had fought on every side, used every weapon, explored every continent, did combat drops, big base fights, etc etc.   I could not think of anything else to see or learn or experience that I hadn't already.  I guess I'm just the 'explorer' type.

Lately nothing gets the adrenaline rushing like EVE.  Huge fleet battles with everyone playing their part from dreads and carriers to the tiny tacklers are amazing when they're not lagged to hell - if nothing else because there's so much virtual cash on the line.  Despite having played forever I still often get jitters and forget to switch on a mod or position correctly in my excitement.  That game renders hours of boredom followed by minutes of terror pretty faithfully.

But UO had it's moments too.  I remember once in particular when after a series of running battles we'd fought this red and his pals back to his house.  He challenged me to a naked 1 vs 1 and despite his faster sword I managed to beat him down with a sliver of health left.  Really felt like good had won over evil that day.

Ultima Online (97-99) would probably be the best. I just don't get the same feeling in the newer risk-free games. Screenshots (http://www.exploiter.org/l-c/screenshots/index.php?dir=Ultima_Online%2F) - Wish I could find the CD with all of my UO screenshots someday.

Shadowbane (beta) was ok, but it can't really compare to UO. The carebear looting policies and client issues were mostly to blame. Screenshots (http://www.exploiter.org/l-c/screenshots/index.php?dir=Shadowbane%2F)

Various muds make up my favorite memories, which I find sad... DAoC being a close 2nd (it will always have a special place in my heart, It was my first graphic mmorpg). I've played SB, SWG, and EVE. But I shouldn't bother putting EVE there... After playing for a few months and not finding a corp that did pvp (other than pirate corps), I quit. Maybe I should apply to F13 the next time I Re-up.

This thread should be moved to MMORPG.com.

Not sure.. I necroed this topic to point out the very interesting article about hardcore pvp servers (http://www.notaddicted.com/forums/showthread.php?t=683). People took the chance to tell some new stories (and I personally like it), but the hardcore servers article has been pretty much ignored.
Wonder if my kid will consider my personal hardcore pvp stories as bonfire horror stories or he will be able to play his owns.
The trend is depressing, so a "hystorical article" like that one is good music to my PvP ears.

You're really... really mean.

Ultima Online 97-99 for the same reasons as the OP listed. Games today force you into one role, and IMHO it limits your options and the unpredictability factor that makes PVP fun.

Not really a MMOG, but I had some good 'near-death experiences' on a permadeath UO shard I played at a few years ago when two factions clashed over the control of a city. The 4-hour siege itself was intense and fun, the board drama following it wasn't.

More recently, in WOW, I frequently do anti-ganker patrols with my lv60 rogue [in blues] or lv60 warlock [in epix] when I'm bored. My personal moment of triumph was when I 1v3'd an infamous lv60 ganker shaman and his two (lv45, lv52) rogue helpers near Darkshire with my rogue... and won, through the use of many dirty engineering tricks. :P Or standing up to a raid group of 15-20 level 20-35ish horde (they had a lv60 leading them, and two others in the 50's) with my warlock outside Lakeshire, and just killing them all slowly by liberal application of dots, kiting, and heals from a nearby 60 priest (hidden in the bushes). Warlocks need a nerf.

Of course, WOW pvp isn't anywhere near as intense or fun [or balanced] as UO, but at least there's some semblance of it on pvp servers. Even if most of the players think that instanced pvp (WSG, AB, AV) is 'the real thing, yo'.


-- Z.

Mine came in a DAoC relic raid.

For those who don't know, the biggest pvp achievement in daoc is stealing a relic from the enemies biggest keep, and transporting it to your own.

Relic keeps are hard to take and hold because the defender gets continuous uber NPC guard reinforcements, plus nearby respawn points for PCs, wheras the attacker has to build multiple (destroyable) siege engines in place just to get through the door, then take the castle before the defending realm gets its inevitably larger numbers organised, then the relic has to be shipped out safely to your own realm. And if anyone dies it's either wait for a player rez, or half an hour travelling time to get back from your home realm.

Anyway, we did most of that, then with relic in hand, the carrier group screwed up, got lost, and died in a forest. To an NPC.

We ended up holding the relic keep for 1 hour and 50 minutes after that - we were lucky that enough people had brought spare siege equipment to make a decent fist of defending a keep without doors or guards, and we were also lucky that practically every decent guild on the server was in attendance, and we'd been having GM conferences for the previous 3 weeks and so even across guilds the chain of command actually worked. Yelling 'XYZ to the East Wall' actually produced a flood of people in XYZ cloaks moving east. I've never seen that before or since.

The relic respawns at the castle if left in the wilderness for 2 hours. Bah.