PvP quote of the year (WoW)

[Riggswolfe]

people like this asshat are why I hate PvP and avoid it like the plague for the most part. I can't stand this kind of mentality and when you couple this with the whole victory is determined more by time invested than by player skill it is just not worth it to me. Now, catch me in a FPS and that's a different story.

[Shannow]

PvP and PvE can't co-exist. Argue:

[Fargull]

Can PvP and PvE exist...

Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Biggest issue though, is I don't believe a game can be setup to function fully as a PvE game and then have PvP added.  I believe that the first incarnation of UO with all the PK grief whine was and still is the best of the PvP world.  The fact that Origin, EA, or whomever caved and began the dance to Trammel is what crushed the game.

A level based PvE system has inherent problems with PvP.  PvE is a controlled content, while PvP is uncontrolled with in a level based environment.

DAOC and Shadowbane both fail in this regard.  I am looking forward to WOW and will see how the PvP is handled, but the strict PvP server is a foolish endeavor.

Building the game with PvP as a foundation, a given in the game world, and then building a PvE environment as an additive of flavor would work if build around a game not revolving around levels.  Finite power is a keystone that the current Diku lack.

[Riggswolfe]

Can PvP and PvE exist...

Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Biggest issue though, is I don't believe a game can be setup to function fully as a PvE game and then have PvP added.  I believe that the first incarnation of UO with all the PK grief whine was and still is the best of the PvP world.  The fact that Origin, EA, or whomever caved and began the dance to Trammel is what crushed the game.

A level based PvE system has inherent problems with PvP.  PvE is a controlled content, while PvP is uncontrolled with in a level based environment.

.

I totally disagree on several points. For one thig I don't think UO was the best of anything. It had some good elements but the PvP side of it was perhaps the worst implementation I have ever seen. The game literally rewarded griefers and hampered legitimate players.

Finally the big issue with trying to mix PvP and PvE is that one aspect of the game will suffer. Period. Devs have finite time and finite resources. Thankfully it is always the PvP that suffers since I don't like PvP in MMOs as currently implemented. (If PvP had at least some aspect of skill I'd be interested. I was briefly interested in Neocron for this very reason since it seemed on the surface to be a FPS/MMO hybrid.)

I wish I had the time to find specific forums posts but you've all seen them on most major MMOs that attempt to mix PvP and PvE in the same game

PvPer: Nerf skill X or class Y it totally owns in PvP

PvEer: that skill isn't overpowered in PvE...

PvPer: shutup carebear!

PvEer: shutup griefer!

[Shannow]

My personal opinion is that PVP and PvE cannot coexist where PvE is the dominant method of advancement in game...aka pretty much any MMORPG today.

PvE could quite happily coexist in a game where PvP is the primary focus and is simply something to do when your not killing other players.

[Paelos]

I've always thought the PvE and PvP are very closely linked in that they rely on the same concepts usually of advancement inside the game realm. Beyond that, stylistically the players that enjoy one or the other don't really get a hard-on for both. I don't think there can be a direct link between the advancements in PvE and the overall game of PvP. To do that creates an internal problem in the flow of both games. In reality, they are two seperate entities trying to co-exist in one union. It is not unlike a marriage, and like that marriage we shouldn't be forcing them to be something that they are not. However, they can live together if we don't try to force them into one box.

My idea is this: you cannot have the same character or the same items used for both PvP and PvE. Imagine them as two seperate games tied together with the common thread that they exist in a similar gameplaying world. In my vision you would have a PvP character in a PvP world, and you would have a PvE character in a PvE world. Both of these worlds would be based on the same lore, the same look, but with different objectives. It's akin to the idea of the Frontiers in DAOC, but not exactly. DAOC fails because you carry the total equivilant of all PvE items and skills into the battlefield, so PvE play directly affects PvP. What we need is a system that rewards PvE players with PvP bonuses, but nothing so drastic as to take the raid weapons into combat. I envision almost a system of points or cash built up by PvE play that can be used to purchase skills and items in the PvP world. That way changes can be made to items and skills independant of their affects on either game, but there would still be a link that binds the games together. If a person wanted to earn the same points by only PvPing, it would be possible since points would be allocated at greater portions there.

You could also connect it back to the PvE game with rewards like better titles, cooler items, and cash rewards for good PvP play. It works both ways.

[Fargull]

I totally disagree on several points. For one thig I don't think UO was the best of anything. It had some good elements but the PvP side of it was perhaps the worst implementation I have ever seen. The game literally rewarded griefers and hampered legitimate players.

We will have to agree to disagree on this point.  The game did not reward either side, it just did not do anything except the god guards to curb the lord of the flies syndrome.  Some great elements began to shine through the initial morass.  Kazola's Tavern, Shadowclan, the Britonian Guard (think that was the name... they would guard players for a price to travel from one city to another), and many more.... No game has this level of interaction currently.  None.

[Venkman]

I don't feel PvP can work on a PvE foundation as well as a PvP game that didn't use levels at all. I accepted SB and UO, but both games have very narrow appeal. Grinds are like that. Grinds to unlock future potential fun are even more so.
[list=1][*]Part of the problem is that PvE mostly only rewards for success. Systems built on that usually have fast fights with preordained outcomes. Players are going to win if they match the requirements the game says they need. Most games don't offer a huge variety of ways to defeat PvE content, separated as everyone is into some type of class or templated specialty.
[*]Another problem is that MMORPGs reward time investment. That's one reason to bother with the monthly fee. Other games you just walk away from when they're done, but MMORPGs are never done. Either you haven't seen everything because the game is bug riddled mess, or the devs outpace your advancement with new content and new rewards.
[*]Finally, more players are disinterested in PvP than those who are. This has drawn the money and time to PvE games. Notice the reintegration of core-RPG methodologies rather than a fundamental overhaul of any PvP system? Games still tack PvP on as a neato whizbang toy in predominantly PvE games because the devs think that's the side their bread is buttered on.[/list:o]

In my ideal world, which is forever in flux, players wouldn't know if the enemy was a player or a mob. Nothing indicates this. No floating name shows this. No language is understood. The enemy simply starts behaving differently than predictable AI.

However, this can only work if advancement is based on the fight, and not on the win. In a level based games, they'd gain XP with each use of a skill (a successful spell cast, a successful hit with a sword, etc). UO is the only game that does this. All others hold back rewards until the fight ends.

Unfortunately, this can't happen because that ensures a rapid advancement through levels. It's too exploitable. So instead, we can only advance when we win contrived fights specifically designed to be won over periods of time during which we are hopefully still having fun.

But this core system could still be facilitated with RPG features.

[*]Your quests could involve hunting Orcs.
[*]Those Orcs may include a few player Orcs.
[*]Perhaps the Orc player has an ability to form a group with those Orcs. You don't know this, but brought friends anyway. [/list:u]
The result is still RPG gaming though, not gaming based on PvP having been a buzzword for a short time. But this assumes things like balance, time investment, equipment distribution, and fun combat systems are included at all.

My eyes are next on City of Villains. That is the closest thing to twitch this genre has come. If PvP is rolled effectively into CoH next year, and the game is much less grindy, it'll be worth a looksee once EQ2 or WoW or both dry up for me.

Until then, I can have a good time with the much better quest-based systems the genre is finally getting.

[Riggswolfe]

We will have to agree to disagree on this point.  The game did not reward either side, it just did not do anything except the god guards to curb the lord of the flies syndrome.  Some great elements began to shine through the initial morass.  Kazola's Tavern, Shadowclan, the Britonian Guard (think that was the name... they would guard players for a price to travel from one city to another), and many more.... No game has this level of interaction currently.  None.

These were player reactions to a broken system. I, as a player, should not be forced to depend on other players to protect me from still other players. It is an interesting experiment in social dynamics but in my opinion not a good game system.

The reason I said it rewarded griefers and punished legit players is because of two aspects of UO during the days I played:

1) You dropped all items upon death
2) You got exps for fighting other players

It was very common in those days for the little PK punks to beat each other up to get maxed out skills, then make a living almost exclusively off of the items they looted off of other players.

The only people I've ever seen say that UO was a great game in those days were in most cases these same PKs.

[Fargull]

These were player reactions to a broken system. I, as a player, should not be forced to depend on other players to protect me from still other players. It is an interesting experiment in social dynamics but in my opinion not a good game system.

Here is where I think our view differs... I think the idea that saying the system is broken to begin with is the problem.  The system was not broken, it was just open and undefined.  The chaos of this and the fact that EA when ape nuts over the forum whine play destroyed the possibility.  One thing most of the MMORPG's of today have learned from UO ... or I hope learned about UO was the amount of grief on the forum and having to carve a customer service solution with the amount of stupid that commonly lands on the official or god forbid the official vault boards....

The community was so small and was targeted at the Ultima player base and not a MUD player base... hell the whole endeavor was aimed at an unknown market in terms of like and dislike of interaction with other players.  I can easily see Richard and Raph thinking the experiment would be tempered by the players following the 'good virtues' of Ultima.  The problem is that the endeavor was never allowed to progress, it was tackled as a cluster without first seeing if the reality was as bad as the whine play indicated.  The common thought today is that what.. 4% of your playerbase posts on the forums.. and then they are the crazy 5%s from the bell curve of the game experience at that....

[Miguel]

PvP works in Planetside because everyone logs in with the simple understanding of what they're trying to accomplish: destroy the enemy.

Planetside also works for PVP because everyone basically starts out the same, and doesn't gain power in an exponential fashion with respect to time played!

Think about it:  a BR4 newb, who goes and sits in every vehicle, gets enough cert points to get some armor and a few guns.  He can still shoot a very veteran player dead in his first battle if he aims carefully.  A senior BR20 player may be able to drive three different kinds of vehicles, and repair them in the field, but the basic assumption in the game is that everyone is equal (from the perspective of the end of a shotgun barrel, that is), regardless of being brand new or having played the game for a year.

Contrast this with a level based game like DAOC, where a level 20 player can run into RVR and come across a level 50 player, and the game won't even let the low level player damage the high level player!  If Planetside worked this way it would be a disaster.  And I don't think it solely is related to FPS vs. RPG either.

The more and more I think about it, and hear it discussed, leads me to believe that the only truly successful PVP systems will be those based on systems where time played is rewarded with increased flexibility, not exponential power growth over other players.

[Riggswolfe]

[
Here is where I think our view differs... I think the idea that saying the system is broken to begin with is the problem.  The system was not broken, it was just open and undefined.  The chaos of this and the fact that EA when ape nuts over the forum whine play destroyed the possibility.  One thing most of the MMORPG's of today have learned from UO ... or I hope learned about UO was the amount of grief on the forum and having to carve a customer service solution with the amount of stupid that commonly lands on the official or god forbid the official vault boards....

The community was so small and was targeted at the Ultima player base and not a MUD player base... hell the whole endeavor was aimed at an unknown market in terms of like and dislike of interaction with other players.  I can easily see Richard and Raph thinking the experiment would be tempered by the players following the 'good virtues' of Ultima.  The problem is that the endeavor was never allowed to progress, it was tackled as a cluster without first seeing if the reality was as bad as the whine play indicated.  The common thought today is that what.. 4% of your playerbase posts on the forums.. and then they are the crazy 5%s from the bell curve of the game experience at that....

I will agree that in some ways UO was a kind of pioneer and so alot of mistakes happened and alot of things were unforseen. The devs pretty much thought that players would police themselves which did happen to an extent. I think what they didn't anticipate was that a large part of the playerbase didn't enjoy being victims.

Frankly, I remember my early UO days. I remember literally being almost unable to play because the PKs were so prevalent. I remember literally breaking my CD in half and writing a very nasty email to Origin over it all.

I think the problem, at least in the early days was just as nasty as the forums indicated. I will admit that I left probably 6 months in because the game was in no way fun for me anymore. I had one or two heart pounding adrenalin moments but I had many more rage filled, frustrating experiences.

UO had some really interesting concepts but I do think it was a case of naive developers not understanding that totally open PvP mixed with a PvE game with odds stacked in favor of griefers was not going to work out.

[Evil Elvis]

When it comes to having real, competative player vs player, it's going to be games like Planetside, where the competion itself is the fun, where I think PvP needs to go (or stay, when you consider fps have been doing it forever now).  When imagining what I think a fun, PvP-based mmorpg would be like, this is the direction I think the genre has to go down.

PvP in traditional mmorpg's is all about character level and phat lewts.  It's more about achievement and griefing than competition.  This is one of the reasons why I don't really care much for PvP in mmorpg's.

I'm looking forward to when someone comes up with a planetside/fps style pvp game which takes better advantage of what persistant online games can offer the gamer.

[blindy]

PvP and PvE can't co-exist. Argue:

Weren't you the person who mentioned that you had played Arctic MUD in another thread?  99% of my time in that game was devoted to PVE, but pretty much all of my fondest memories of it involve PVP.  Since losing a PVP fight tended to be so brutal (exp loss, possible level loss, possible permentant hp loss, though they removed that a few years ago, probably full item loss), large-scale PVP didn't happen that often at the high levels, but when it did it had a huge effect.  If you got the drop on an enemy clan and took out their stacked characters, you could set them back a month or more.  Or they could do the same to you, heh.  Certainly losing in that environment wasn't fun, but winning was such a rush for me.

I think it's silly to say they can't co-exist.  Obviously they have and continue to do so.  Whether they can co-exist and attract a huge number of players is a different question, but clearly there are people who enjoy a mix of PVE and PVP (and I'm one of them).  For instance, Sullon Zek was pretty much the only fun I ever had in EQ.  The regular servers bored me to tears, and I never got over about level 20 on any of them.

[Roac]

That happened with DAoC's 2 PvP servers and then they ended up closing one of them because the populations dropped shortly thereafter. Most people went to try it out and when they got tired of the grief, they left.

Most people tend to find that anarchy is not to their taste.  Yet, the only other option that devs have seem to have been able to come up with are either PvP switches or PvP zones - which only relegates anarchy to a certain place/group.  This only turns that place into the third world of the MMOG world that people avoid like the plague.

Because most people tend to find that anarchy is not to their taste.

[Shannow]

PvP and PvE can't co-exist. Argue:

Weren't you the person who mentioned that you had played Arctic MUD in another thread?

Correct

  99% of my time in that game was devoted to PVE, but pretty much all of my fondest memories of it involve PVP.  Since losing a PVP fight tended to be so brutal (exp loss, possible level loss, possible permentant hp loss, though they removed that a few years ago, probably full item loss), large-scale PVP didn't happen that often at the high levels, but when it did it had a huge effect.  If you got the drop on an enemy clan and took out their stacked characters, you could set them back a month or more.  Or they could do the same to you, heh.  Certainly losing in that environment wasn't fun, but winning was such a rush for me.

I played Arctic for the PVE, if they'd removed PvP from the game I wouldn't have cared one bit.  Now can you imagine if your a semi-casual player on EQ or whatever (where remember your paying 13 bucks a month to play) zoning away happily and a group of high level clannies come past and kill you in two tics because they feel like it..and you lose all your eq and gold?

I think it's silly to say they can't co-exist.  Obviously they have and continue to do so.  Whether they can co-exist and attract a huge number of players is a different question, but clearly there are people who enjoy a mix of PVE and PVP (and I'm one of them).

Well the obvious part of my statement that was missing was the 'and attract a huge number of players' I figured most ppl would assume thats what I meant.
And thats the whole point. Arctic MUD is a horribly bad example to project onto your modern MMRPG, almost completely unfettered PVP with full item loot? Remember Arctic is free with about 80 players on at max...theres a difference.
Yes there are people who enjoy a mix of PvE and PvP and pretty much your the minority.
The whole point of stating PvE and PvP can't co-exist WELL is that if your power in a PvP matchup is derived from your ability to PvE then only the hardcore catass is rewarded. Many in this thread have already pointed out why the lack of player skill in PvP = the suk.

Dont get me wrong, I love PvP. I used to play Battletech Mux's where the learning curve is clifflike and if you took a headshot you'd sit in death for an hour (nevermind having to get a new mech)..you had to make BTH rolls so luck was a factor, but your kill determined how much of a factor it was. Knowing how to use LOS, your mechs weapons, moving to get good firing solutions etc made combat intensely fun. (Geldon can attest to this)

Maybe thats problem with mmrPG combat, theres no luck factor. Theres no chance to minimize or maximize your lucky opportunities..Even in battletech when you run into that heavy mech with your light you know that with skill and a bit of luck (a crit, headshot, a good charge) you could win the battle...You run into the proverbial 50 level warrior in EQ with your 20 and you have ZERO chance.

As Miguel said in another thread 'Higher levels/rank should afford more flexibility not exponential power growth over other players.

[El Gallo]

meaningful PvP cannot exist in a persistent world at all.  Even if it could, PvP and PvE have too many opposed goals to work well in the same game.  For one, PvP requires a meticulously balanced character system whereas PvE requires a metric fuckton of content added on a regular basis.

Just look at this genre’s inability to make a truly great PvE game OR a truly great PvP game.  You want to do both at once?  That’s like trying to make a great Civilization/Counterstrike hybrid.  In 1978.

[sinij]

Its not PvP that most non-PvPers object to, it is penalty for loosing. I don't see how can game designers can justify harsh punishments for death penalty for PvP when loosing is expected outcome for fair chunk of players in any given PvP encounter. On other hand you can't make loosing battles in PvP meaningless - for PvP to be fun there should be some meaningful goals you can achieve with it. What I think correct solution to this situation is to penalize PvP encounters based on PvP goals – experience, levels and gear are all geared toward PvE and should be left out but control over areas, ownership of status symbols and ability to change certain game mechanics is what PvP should be about.

In early UO’s example – say your miner/monster basher does not looses anything when killed if they purchase item insurance for nominal cost, but people in control of any given dungeon have an ability to increase or decrease spawn/resources, disable or enable recall in and out of dungeon, tax all collected gold/resources and control artifacts that are associated with that dungeon. So non-PvPer looses only minimal cost of item insurance when killed but PvPers might loose control over dungeon and all associated benefits of that.

[Merusk]

The community was so small and was targeted at the Ultima player base and not a MUD player base... hell the whole endeavor was aimed at an unknown market in terms of like and dislike of interaction with other players.  I can easily see Richard and Raph thinking the experiment would be tempered by the players following the 'good virtues' of Ultima.  The problem is that the endeavor was never allowed to progress, it was tackled as a cluster without first seeing if the reality was as bad as the whine play indicated.  The common thought today is that what.. 4% of your playerbase posts on the forums.. and then they are the crazy 5%s from the bell curve of the game experience at that....

You say that like you haven't seen Raph address this before.  He has in person to previous iterations of this board and community.  At those times he said that UO was losing players on the scale of tens of thousands due to the actions of a portion of the playerbase that was at most somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2%. Something had to be done, because it wasn't just forum whining.

[SirBruce]

As I've said before, I don't think it's necessarily impossible to integrate PvP and PvE play in an MMORPG... but teams with a lot more talent and money than <insert some guy's board posting idea here> have tried it, and they've all failed.  So whenever someone claims to have the perfect PvP system for a PvE game, I'm not going to believe it until I see it.

The dealth penalty is at the core of the issue, although even with no death penalty at all I still wouldn't PvP much at all.  And the thing is, there's no way you're going to get NO death penalty into the design, especially when I think most MMOGs have too high a dealth penalty for PvE as it is.  About the only one I could think of was friendly dueling in World of Warcraft, which I did a couple of times in beta, and which carried no penalty when I lost, and which I would not be all that interested in doing in release.

Bruce

[Sky]

Death penalty is an issue, but don't most games restrict penalties from a pvp death? Of course, still plenty of room for grief, as someone who's been jumped countless times fighting elementals in Shame with a sliver of health left can attest to.

For me, the worst part about mmog pvp/pve hybrids is the levelling. The artificial gimping of new players. The artificial buffing of players with a lot of time on their hands. PvP will always suck (imo) when there is an uneven playing field. The fun is in beating someone equivalent to you, not in 'pwning' some newb. Again, imo, and mo is apparently in the minority. Seems folks just want to wtfpwn.

Now...if there were some fauna (and maybe even flora, eh) that made things between the bases in Planetside a bit more treacherous (and interesting), I wouldn't mind. PvE can serve as setting, too, not just the core reason for the advancement and foozle dropping in a massive timesink.

[El Gallo]

For PvP to be meaningful, it must confer a real benefit on the winner and/or a real detriment on the loser.  If the world is persistent, the reward or detriment must be as well.  The problem is that once you win a few times or lose a few times, you are well on your way to being a perma-winner or perma-loser.

That's why PvP needs some form of board-wiping mechanism, unless you are satisfied with a deathmatch system that has no real impact on the world (e.g. a ladder board or something).  PvErs want NO PART of any kind of board-wiping mechanism that destroys all their progress,

There's a reason you reset the board after every chess match, and there's a reason the next Steelers-Browns game doesn't start with the score 3,641-2,087.  It's the same reason there will never again be a competitive combat between the United States and the Iroquois Nation, and it’s the same reason persistent world PvP MMOGS are doomed if they are placed in truly persistent worlds.

[Sky]

Isn't the board wiped a bit when people go to bed? You might get a periodic domination, but barring an uberguild that keeps a high level of players in the game around the clock...

I like the way Planetside makes the playing field so large that it's difficult to dominate the entire world, and even if you can, it's impossible to do so for any serious length of time. You get the short term 'win' of locking some continents, but it's also only a short term loss.

[Fargull]

You say that like you haven't seen Raph address this before.  He has in person to previous iterations of this board and community.  At those times he said that UO was losing players on the scale of tens of thousands due to the actions of a portion of the playerbase that was at most somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2%. Something had to be done, because it wasn't just forum whining.

I worked up this long post last night and as sometimes happens at home nothing appeared when I tried to post... Anyway, the gist was that on Great Lakes the only noticable decline when beta ended and UO went live was from Lag.  That was the dominating issue two-three months after release.. the PK issue was becoming a board topic, but Lag was the dominating force.  Of course that never really got resolved... Yes, I remember Raph speaking to the subject, though never in the tens of thousands before and the only time I noticed a drastic drop in population was when EQ released.  The largest pain I heard on the PK front was when the first exploits reared their head, and I dont mean the death shroud one...

[Sky]

Yeah, I have to admit I never really had much of a problem with pks in UO. Pk'd maybe a half dozen times in this first year. And even then only bothered when it happened to my miner while he was mining.

Lag, the broadband users on horses, exploits...that was the stuff I remember having problems with in early UO. Heck, even late UO. When I cancelled for the first time (EQ beta), the final straw was watching some exploiter robbing my house through the walls. Took screenshots, CS didn't do squat, so I just quit.

[Furiously]

Other then running from 7 PKs my only memory that I giggle about was making a new bank theif char and stealing someone's keys from them at the bank, then trying the keys on the first house I passed and them opening the door.

I wasn't that evil so I just re-arranged their stuff, then logged in my other character and just laughed as I heard them talking to the Bluerobe.

[Roac]

Yeah, I have to admit I never really had much of a problem with pks in UO.

I had a rough time with them when I was first starting, but most of that was a result of being so weak that they could one or two shot me.  After working out how to train and basic escape strategies, they weren't much of an issue.

[HaemishM]

people like this asshat are why I hate PvP and avoid it like the plague for the most part. I can't stand this kind of mentality and when you couple this with the whole victory is determined more by time invested than by player skill it is just not worth it to me. Now, catch me in a FPS and that's a different story.

People like this asshat are the primary reason for a lot of problems in MMOG's.

PVP and PVE can't co-exist because people like the assclown quoted at the top of this thread can barely control their own fucking bladder, much less their more juvenile impulses. On top of that, they can't control their mouths, so they end up berating their victims, making the victimization worse, as well as berating anyone who disagrees that this kind of stupidity is fun. This berating generally reveals that said person has about the intellectual capacity of fermented camel jizz left on a window sill for six years.

These people ruined the virtual world aspect of UO, and every game since then, including SB, has had to alter its game designs to keep these muffin-snatchers from driving off anyone with an IQ above room temperature.

[Koyasha]

These were player reactions to a broken system. I, as a player, should not be forced to depend on other players to protect me from still other players. It is an interesting experiment in social dynamics but in my opinion not a good game system.

I don't consider it a broken system, personally.  Seemed quite appropriate for a semi-roleplaying game.  There was a benefit from winning (loot), something to lose (loot), and recovering wasn't too hard (if you were smart about things).  Keep a full set of spare equipment in the bank.  Know you are going to die at some point, and be prepared for it.  Constantly update your spare equipment set.  (I had 2 sets of spare equipment, infact).  Don't go to dangerous places without being either confident that you can get away (and ready to be proven wrong), or with many friends.  Just being intelligent, strategic, prepared...  I, and many people I knew, went weeks without being killed because we were smart and took precautions.  Occasionally we would lose in combat to PK's, and we were prepared for that.  People who treated the world as if they should have the divine right to do anything they please and not have anyone be able to do anything to them...they got killed a lot.  Then they whined.  And they made the game suck for those of us who liked it the old way.

I think depending on others for protection was interesting.  It limited what I could do at any given time, but it meant I knew people.  And in a game where you could chat with those who were in your physical presence, and THAT WAS IT, no tells, guildchat, channels, shouts, etc, I had a lot of friends.  I have never had that many people I know in any games since, because since then, we've been shielded and buffered from anyone we don't feel like interacting with - and without a good reason to do so, I never feel like interacting with anyone in these games.  We had groups and communities that existed for greater reason than simply to wipe out the latest ubermob.  The simple act of *finding* your friend required other people to be involved, in which you would ask them if they'd seen him around...

But, I question whether or not a game that does work for those of us who liked UO will ever be successful.  Perhaps the audience isn't big enough to make what is considered a financially successful MMOG in this age.  UO was, I think, in many ways, the best MMOG to date.  I see many changes, some improvements, but nothing that is 'the game I played back then, only better'.

As my final notes...note that I say semi-roleplaying.  A roleplaying game will never work in MMOG format, and I would never look for one that did, at least not by my definition of roleplaying (hint: it does not include immortal characters that are slain and automatically come back to life an infinite number of times, or any of the other 'game' elements to make the game tolerable when you have assholes).  And as far as the only people that liked UO back then being PK's goes..  I certainly wasn't.  Oh, I'd occasionally toast some idiot that pissed me off, but I definitely wasn't the type that'd just spring out and attack random people for no reason at all.  More often I'd find myself hunting down said PK's...which was extremely fun.

[HaemishM]

I will agree that in some ways UO was a kind of pioneer and so alot of mistakes happened and alot of things were unforseen. The devs pretty much thought that players would police themselves which did happen to an extent. I think what they didn't anticipate was that a large part of the playerbase didn't enjoy being victims.

I think they also did not believe that such a large part of the playerbase would so enjoy being victimizers as well.

[Fargull]

PVP and PVE can't co-exist because people like the assclown quoted at the top of this thread can barely control their own fucking bladder, much less their more juvenile impulses. On top of that, they can't control their mouths, so they end up berating their victims, making the victimization worse, as well as berating anyone who disagrees that this kind of stupidity is fun. This berating generally reveals that said person has about the intellectual capacity of fermented camel jizz left on a window sill for six years.

These people ruined the virtual world aspect of UO, and every game since then, including SB, has had to alter its game designs to keep these muffin-snatchers from driving off anyone with an IQ above room temperature.

Haemish,

I keep coming back to DAoC and wonder if instead of an open chat enterface, that each player playable race/nation would have it's own language not understood by anyone outside their race/nation.  Have the same system as UO, but no cross chat at least in game.  No pvp with in one's own nation/race except via mutual dual.  Would this help?

[HaemishM]

I think it would help a lot. Look at DAoC, an ostensibly PVP game with a PVE front end. Dave Rickey once listed some stats from the game that said over 70% (I think, Dave can correct me) of the people in the game had actually participated in RVR at some point. DAoC is still over 200k users. It was very very difficult to "grief" in DAoC with PVP. There's something to be said for that.

[Paelos]

I agree that DAOC's model for the RvR idea was good and that Foundations went a long way to do it even better, but they lost their way with the idea of ToA. That expansion literally killed everything for me. I bought it, I played it for two hours, and I quit the game.

Never looked back either.

[Mesozoic]

You thought you had The Quote, but lo, the Diablo2er had not yet spoken.

Hardcore is the ultimate challenge. You guys just aren't hardcore. You don't understand unless you've played D2 hardcore and loved it for everything it is.

Yes, he wants a Hardcore PvP WoW server.  Yes, he was told how assinine that is.

[Shannow]

Thank god they are self neutering themselves.

I think I gave up on D2 about 1/4 of the way because it was such an almightly boring slug fest.