Your "Best MMO PvP experience" so far.

[Sparky]

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.

[LC]

Ultima Online (97-99) would probably be the best. I just don't get the same feeling in the newer risk-free games. Screenshots - 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

[FatuousTwat]

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.

[Signe]

This thread should be moved to MMORPG.com.

[Falconeer]

Not sure.. I necroed this topic to point out the very interesting article about hardcore pvp servers. 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.

[damijin]

This thread should be moved to MMORPG.com.

You're really... really mean.

[waylander]

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.

[Zetor]

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.

[eldaec]

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.