PVP
I never got to play DAOC or Shadowbane long enough to really enjoy the PVP. Shadowbane I kept getting ganked by high level bastards and I did a siege that just bored me because I barely had any involvement personally. Did have some fun on the various EQ PVP servers. But my best experience by far was WoW on a PVP server. This was before WOTLK era. I was a druid and my favourite zone was this jungle type place. I was questing there but I would gank players if I ever saw one, or die trying. I saw a paladin fighting and I waited for them to be injured before I attacked, but they never really got injured. They were also the same level as me or maybe one higher, so it was risky. I stalked them through the grass in stealth lion form, stalking people was so fucking fun. Then I pounced! Ripping in to their back with a backstab damage over time and stun, but it barely did anything. Then they ran so I went in to caster form and cast some spells on them and then she noticed that I had barely even scratched her. So she just turned around came for me
I went in to bear form and managed to tank and with some kiting I managed to get her to about 50% but so was I. In the end I ran and cast spells on her as she chased and then she got injured. Then she ran so I turned and chased her and went back in to lion form to chase and backstab. It was back and forth like that, we ran all over the fucking zone, fight must have lasted 5 minutes. But it's about the most fun I have ever had in an MMO. Beats any raid or anything. Nothing got my adrenaline going like that before or since.
PVE:
I had more fun groups usually than raids, but I did a LOT of raiding in Shards of Dalaya because its basically an EQ Emulator server that is mostly focused on raiding. There is a huge amount of raid content. There was one particular encounter we did (guild I was in) that was really hard. It was just so finely tuned down to the fucking last hit point. I think it was an 18 person raid. Basically it needed 2 tanks, MT on the big bad guy, and an off tank on his assistant who was immune to most control spells so he had to be off tanked. But at various points, adds would spawn and the tanks couldnt disengage so all the dps would have to kite these adds all over the place or die. Someone had to snare them and then everyone had to run around kiting them while trying to kill them, and even the healers had to kite because they would aggro whoever. And both healers and dps had to do that while still occasionally assisting the main tank and off tank or they would die. Then near the end, a third big mob would spawn and a chanter had to charm that, and set it on the 2 main guys and try to kill one so that the last 2 could be tanked. We tried like 10 times and kept failing for various reasons (there was enrage and flurry and devastating blow and all kinds of shit we had to deal with in addition to just kiting). Everyone was pissed off and wanted to sleep, but we gave it one last shot.. That last attempt worked, but almost everyone died during the fight, and by the time we were down to the final boss, it was only me (cleric), the 2 tanks, and one dps left. Everyone else was dead, even star monk who basically never died, and I had no mana to really do much either. I just basically bit my nails while watching the last mobs hp sloooowly go down as just 2 tanks 1 mostly oom druid whittled it down. And eventually it died... Phat loot was had by all.