PvP, WoW, etc.

[Hoofhurr]

That would seem to be the case but for some reason the pre-velious EQ PvP system, which was a secondary consideration to Verant, blows every game out of the water that was designed for PvP since then. How did that happen? How can we take that base and improve on it? I can make those statements eventhough I played a cleric for those first 8 months.

It's hard to pinpoint why it was so much fun and why no one has been able to reproduce it since then, but I'll try anyway.

1) There was a strong sense of team solidarity. You were proud of your team and everyone else was a potential enemy.

2) The number of high level characters was relatively small and you knew both friends and enemies very intimately. You generally encountered the same individuals over and over again and it became a chess game of sorts.

3) The game had tons of options/items/spells/skills/geography that could all be used to great effect in a PvP environment. There were so many variables to consider when engaging in a PvP fight that it was mentally stimulating from a tactical perspective. This includes the Z-axis bug, lag, motility spells, Line-of-sight, etc.

4) If you were playing smart, PvP fights could last a long time, long enough to switch from a defensive strategy to an offensive strategy if you wished too. People still got ganked but the smarter you got the less you got ganked and no one was really strong enough to one shot you so you usually had a chance to recover and make good your escape or turn the tide of the fight.

5) Group versus Group PvP. A fight might start out as you v. him but as soon as one of his friends joined you had to consider the abilities/gear/skill/level/etc of that new person and how they might combine their efforts to take you out. The combinations here are inumerable and that was definitely a big lure to PvP.

6) The starting cities for a team were close together in relation to the starting cities of other teams. This created a territorial, battlelines, type of scenario right from the start. Certain teams had better access to certain dungeons which created a supply and demand dynamic for items among teams. What it really did was give you a reason to go into enemy territory and put yourself at risk in order to obtain something.
The market interaction for items found in guk vs solb was an incredible dynamic. Not only did you most times have to go in and steal the camp from someone but you also had to defend it while other people tried to take it from you. Talk about player created content some more please...the Zek servers had this stuff from day one. Imagine if you will 30 v 30 person battles in the Plane of Hate or Plane of Fear. Those zones were deadly to begin with but when you add 60 people running around in circles killing eachother to the mix it gets that much more intense.

7) Battling over zones to xp in. This was huge because it quickly became apparent how important levels were in PvP more so than any item you could gain. This idea is central. Levels are the single most important factor in trivializing content. It is also the reason why people powerleveled so much. If you can take away from the importance of levels so much then you remove the desire to get to the highest levels asap. This would make PvP more fun too.

I think you will find that as EQ progressed all of those points except for number 7 were diluted or altered which worsened the PvP experience over time. I think you will also find that many of these points are missing or cheapened in some fashion in other games that have tried to create a MMORPG with a strong PvP component.