Your "Best MMO PvP experience" so far.

[Falconeer]

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")

[stray]

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.

[bhodi]

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

[tazelbain]

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

[AcidCat]

Nothing has really come close to PlanetSide for me.

[HaemishM]

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.

[CadetUmfer]

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.

[Falconeer]

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!

[WayAbvPar]

My favorite experience has been documented in Lum's excellent book.

[Merusk]

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.

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.

[Strazos]

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.

[Signe]

My favorite experience has been documented in Lum's excellent book.

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. 

[WayAbvPar]

My favorite experience has been documented in Lum's excellent book.

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

[shiznitz]

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.

[Yegolev]

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.

[Signe]

Quiet, Feet!  :-D

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

[Morfiend]

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.

[Slayerik]

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. :)

[Viin]

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.

[Righ]

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.

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.

[Nija]

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.

[Soln]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

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.

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

[waylander]

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.

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.

[Cheddar]

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. ;)

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.

[Dren]

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.

[Righ]

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.

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.

[HaemishM]

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

[waylander]

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

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

[Fargull]

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

[schild]

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

[Tale]

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.

[Johny Cee]

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.

[Threash]

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

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.

[Flood]

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.