The Elder Scrolls Online

Oh, I just meant, you know, having a world where you could randomly encounter the enemy as you were leveling or go hunt them where they were leveling. WoW at launch was pretty good for that. You could be on some quest or out exping and get in a fight.

It is sad that by now when we think of pvp, we think of a convoluted system of points and gear and specific zones or where a bunch of lamers zerged each other. We don't think of just having a world where you'd quest and exp and occasionally fight or have to run. To me, BGs and having to queue up for anything isn't pvp. It's a bunch of housewives taking a taebo class thinking they've kickboxed. It's a game shoving a pvp system up your ass because there isn't anything in the game world worth actually fighting over.

Pyros_sl said:

Tarren mills wars were boring as fuck, camping blackrock was ok during primetime to catch the raiders, that was about it really. It had honor system at launch though iirc? Or maybe that was added right after but before BGs, since I remember people grinding to rank14 before BGs were released. Definitely not a great pvp experience compared to older pvp games, in fact I'd say the novelty of BGs, the lack of cross server queues and the ability to queue as groups made that the better part of wow's pvp until arenas. The novelty faded fairly quickly though and overall wow was just not a very good pvp games. Silithus wars during the AQ gates opening was the last time I had fun doing pvp in wow I think, and that only lasted for like a week.

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I hate TM, but blackrock stuff was fun as fuck And yeah honor came later, closer to BG launch.

Pyros_sl said:

Tarren mills wars were boring as fuck, camping blackrock was ok during primetime to catch the raiders, that was about it really. It had honor system at launch though iirc? Or maybe that was added right after but before BGs, since I remember people grinding to rank14 before BGs were released. Definitely not a great pvp experience compared to older pvp games, in fact I'd say the novelty of BGs, the lack of cross server queues and the ability to queue as groups made that the better part of wow's pvp until arenas. The novelty faded fairly quickly though and overall wow was just not a very good pvp games. Silithus wars during the AQ gates opening was the last time I had fun doing pvp in wow I think, and that only lasted for like a week.

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did you not raid towns/cities too? Deep run tram. Grom gol. Undercity. Duskwood/westfall was good too. all of STV was a battleground at all times.
Wow's contested/uncontested system was pretty good. The layout for graveyards in most cases good, to promote travel to attack.

player tracking on the map was hunter only. And just dots with humanoid tracking iirc.


yeah, the Honor system was shortly before BG's. it also killed world pvp as they implemented honor loss on low level npc kill. A huge mistake. as it shut down world pvp at the risk of accidentally killing one. town takeovers stopped dead.

I also have mentioned I think Azurgoes was an amazing world pvp objective. kazzak, and emerald dragons were very much less so, as they were more raid killers themselves. Which made pvp, just cheese.

Caliane_sl said:

did you not raid towns/cities too? Deep run tram. Grom gol. Undercity. Duskwood/westfall was good too. all of STV was a battleground at all times.
Wow's contested/uncontested system was pretty good. The layout for graveyards in most cases good, to promote travel to attack.

player tracking on the map was hunter only. And just dots with humanoid tracking iirc.


yeah, the Honor system was shortly before BG's. it also killed world pvp as they implemented honor loss on low level npc kill. A huge mistake. as it shut down world pvp at the risk of accidentally killing one. town takeovers stopped dead.

I also have mentioned I think Azurgoes was an amazing world pvp objective. kazzak, and emerald dragons were very much less so, as they were more raid killers themselves. Which made pvp, just cheese.

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Thats when i stopped playing WoW, june 2005 i think it was. The PVP was fun, a 27 priest could support other players to take down a 52 hunter, the open world was fun, the raiding of cities was fun. Then BG patch hit and world emptied.

Pyros_sl said:

The world was extremely fragmented and levels were a huge issue early on(and later), you simply couldn't land a spell on anyone that was 6+levels higher cause it used the same hit formula as mobs. There were only a few areas where you would encounter anyone while leveling(STV for example). Didn't help I guess that I leveled faster than most since I had played beta, so there weren't too many people in the areas I was in. There was also no penalty for death or way to deny the guy you just killed from coming back a minute later at full health, which made pvping while leveling a chore if you actually wanted to level and pointless as shit if you wanted to pvp. No zone control, no item loss, no xp loss, no long run back, it was fairly shit, just graveyard rush. Add to that the many imbalances of wow classes pre pvp trinket(rogue stunlocks, AP pom pyro mage, aimed shot+multishot instant killing anyone if either crit, mortal strike with pre normalized arcanite reaper etc).

It really wasn't good pvp. It was better than some other stuff, including later wow, but it was far from being something you should aim for in terms of pvp.

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I'm not saying it was perfect. I'm saying it was pretty good, especially as a start in a new, widely accepted game (even then). It was a ton better than the shit it became. It was even better than the shit in later games. All because devs trying to implement pvp systems makes it into something other than what I consider worthwhile pvp. You talk about vanilla WoW as if there was no ramifications and it was pointless, but compared to the 'systems' we've gotten since....?

If you killed someone enough (or died enough) wasn't there a timer? It's a mechanism I think is lame, as I prefer exp loss personally, but I swear there was a timer so it's not like there wasn't any penalty at all and it was just straight bind-rushing.

I found if you killed someone enough they went away. I also found that open world fights as people were exping or just passing through or non-gank-squad fights weren't bad in that you fought it out, maybe a few times, and then the loser moved on.

Then again, it does seem your perspective is from someone who rushed to max level, which both the rushing and max-level aspects add their own issues.

You seem to be intent on arguing that it wasn't good when the only point I was making is that it was better when it wasn't a 'pvp system' and was pretty good and could have been much better and improved on had WoW not just gone to the pointless, meaningless 'pvp system' grind. Even with the flaws WoW had at launch, in general and in regards to pvp, it was still better pvp than the games that have launched since that put a big emphasis on 'pvp systems' that turn out to be shit.

The best pvp is when you're given a world, preferably with aspects worth fighting over, and then pvp is turned on. From there things can be tweaked and improved, but even flawed imo will always be better than the instanced, honor/rank grinding sparring sessions we've gotten since WoW patched in the battlegrounds. This is of course exactly what TESO is becoming, and the more they try to improve their pvp system by adding more features, the more it because shit.

At least in my opinion. Then again, I still think Sullon Zek was amazing, so it's not like I'm the average gamer.

PVP is supposed to be about killing someone , in the open world unannounced, because you want to kill them. Thus the PVE world now has constant unscripted danger you cannot control.

Because it's fun. And maybe you get to take something of theirs , even better.

I don't remember "points" on the Zek servers , in Lineage (1 and 2 ) you had a chance to take their shit and so on. The mere idea of a "balanced battleground instanced zone" would have been ludicrous at the time.

I wish it had stayed that way.

The problem with wows pvp while leveling was that it was kinda hard alot of the times for someone to really move on, the quest hubs made it so you had to do shit in order, there may have been a few camps total for any given level range in the world, taking an hour or two to move to desolace wasnt a great option to give people who were getting camped trying to progress through STV. And that just got worse in the xpacs, where the quest struction was much more rigid with sometimes no where else to go at all to level.

The sit and grind games like EQ where you arent on breadcrumb quest paths work better for that kind of pvp.

The problem with any PvP is this.. it's pointless. I'm a major proponent to PvP but there has yet to be anyone to make it an integral part of the game. EQ2 at one point made it fun but it really wasn't a major part of your character's progression. They tried to make it important by adding PvP armor that made you better at PvP, only achievable by PvP'ing thus earning PvP currency. That essentially made PvP a side game and completely removed you from EQ's world. WAR actually tried to do it right but overlooked some major concepts and mechanics.

Until PvP becomes part of the progression and development of a character in addition to a major part of the overall environment of the game, it isn't going to be done right. It cannot be a 2nd or 3rd option. Unfortunately, I do not think that MMO's facilitate this well as most of us have been programmed to quest, grind, dungeon crawl, and raid. However, I do believe that PvP can somehow be intertwined in these overarching concepts but at the moment, PvP is just a ganking inconvenience that takes place among that major aspects of the game design.

Dahkoht_sl said:

PVP is supposed to be about killing someone , in the open world unannounced, because you want to kill them. Thus the PVE world now has constant unscripted danger you cannot control.

Because it's fun. And maybe you get to take something of theirs , even better..

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If I want PVP I'll play a shooter, MOBA, or game designed for PVP. What you describe above sounds more like griefing.

For me PVP should have a purpose or be objective based and should be combat between similar players, not random killing that chases away the normals, i.e. most of the playerbase, because it's fun for a few people.

PVP in MMOs by and large is terrible. Random ganking is meaningless and does not generally add excitement, just frustration, and also limits who will want to play the game. On the flip side, a setup like DAOC Frontiers is perfect, but generally won't appeal to the PVP types looking for Schadenfreude, which seems to be most of the FFA types.

I think PVP could be done well if a game was designed, but by and large most PVPers I see on these boards want to gank, not actually fight. Ganking especially with item loss without a good design or a way to protect your normals is really bad juju.

PVP just can't be awesome in a game designed around PVE, IMO

see, that is my problem with most peoples statements on what pvp should be.

Is it just me that likes all of the above?
Sometimes I log on and want to go exploring, questing, whatever. And have the excitement of having to watch my back at all times. or to be on the other side, and go hunting.
Sometimes I come home from work.(or now, just shut down Photoshop, and swap over), and I'm tired, and don't feel like that, and just want to zerg pvp with little high end play.
Sometimes, I DO want to work in a coordinated team effort.

When I hear, "one true way to pvp" arguments, I just don't know.

Not a big fan of griefing though yeah. I think controls need to be in place for sure. These controls can come in many forms.

I did forget to mention pvp over resources in wow as well. ores, and herbs. something that didn't turn out so well in GW2. a few of us mentioned how pvp should be over resources and not just arbitrary points, with artificial point values. look at how that played out in gw2.
The basic world being pve, had resource nodes and they are all phased so every player gets their own.
The pvp world did as well. So you have these nodes, but everyone can pick without fighting over them. And as the same time, the resources are in competition with the point system. Wasting time on the worm or other champions for example. everyone doing those things actively hurting your realm.
Imagine if picking the omnomnom berries added points to your realm. think about how controlling those would change how the RvR is played. Or if supply depots actually spawned ore or plants after 5min or so. Maybe holding towers, and keeps increased the amount that spawn.

The best type of factional pvp I experienced was Anarchy Online. Some over control of a raid mob (Tarasque in a dungeon), but mainly the guild vs guild land control.

Notum Wars was guild vs guild land control with benefits if you owned the towers on the land. It was also factional so alliances between guilds were key. It bred the politics and community interaction that has been completely lacking in more recent MMOs. The only downside was if too many we're fighting it could be a lagfest due to AO's poor netcode.

I don't understand why no recent MMOs have tried land control - it's the best way to create community, rivalries and ultimately a reason to care about PVP.

Delicateflower_sl said:

Thats when i stopped playing WoW, june 2005 i think it was. The PVP was fun, a 27 priest could support other players to take down a 52 hunter, the open world was fun, the raiding of cities was fun. Then BG patch hit and world emptied.

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BG ruined pvp for WoW. Pre-BG WoW on pvp servers was awesome fun!

popsicledeath_sl said:

You sure? Because I remember starting on a pvp server and having it actually be pretty good pvp until the battle grounds were shoved up my ass.

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popsicledeath_sl said:

Oh, I just meant, you know, having a world where you could randomly encounter the enemy as you were leveling or go hunt them where they were leveling. WoW at launch was pretty good for that. You could be on some quest or out exping and get in a fight.

It is sad that by now when we think of pvp, we think of a convoluted system of points and gear and specific zones or where a bunch of lamers zerged each other. We don't think of just having a world where you'd quest and exp and occasionally fight or have to run. To me, BGs and having to queue up for anything isn't pvp. It's a bunch of housewives taking a taebo class thinking they've kickboxed. It's a game shoving a pvp system up your ass because there isn't anything in the game world worth actually fighting over.

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Wow funny discussion I kicked off there. My point was actually the same as yours. WoW didnt have a PvP system at launch (it did have pvp servers though, and they were fun). Then they came with the honor system and BGs and season points and arenas and whateverthefuck after I left. Imo all of that made pvp worse not better.

Someone called all that stuff the 'pvp crutch' in the wildstar thread and that's a great description.

Mr Creed_sl said:

Wow funny discussion I kicked off there. My point was actually the same as yours. WoW didnt have a PvP system at launch (it did have pvp servers though, and they were fun). Then they came with the honor system and BGs and season points and arenas and whateverthefuck after I left. Imo all of that made pvp worse not better.

Someone called all that stuff the 'pvp crutch' in the wildstar thread and that's a great description.

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it had a pvp system. it just didnt have pvp rewards.



BGS vs world pvp.

BG's should give less rewards. not more. that was WoW mistake. The advantage of bgs pvp is that it is on call. instant satisfaction. no searching for a fight, and generally a more or less fair one.
Bg's were just massively more efficient in gaining honor, and later gear attached to it. That was a mistake.
They should of course act like most other pvp games.
Ranked and unranked BGS. for fun, and for actual gain. and both do not have the same rewards as the world pvp which should have real resources and unique advantages. As I and Tuco both mention.