Best MMO PvP you ever played?

[keebitual]

DAOC by far and away. I to was Midguard Iseult. I forget Echoics healers name Torid maybe?... was a little Dwarf. I do Remember Almendinger, Pro-RvR raid leader. And SHandu Pro PvE raid leader... both from Bedlam.

 

Our Guild Iron Wolves, then later Asgarths Vanguard held a keep for many many many months for Alliance 1. I think ours was "Nott". I remember dropping everything the first time our guards reported enemies in the area. Pick up a load of wood (To repair the gate) and go defend... crying for help to alliance as soon as a saw if it were needed.

 

I loved that Guilds could form alliances, and that spys were sniffed out then run out of guild/alliance/realm.

 

I remember waking up at 3am for relic raids. The secrecy of forming and executing raids was awesome.

 

1: DAOC

2:WOW

3:RIFT

4:Warhammer/STOR

5:AOC

 

sadly i never played EVE/AC/Planetside or UO or others

Edited January 5, 2012 by keebitual

[Grometsc]

DAOC

 

And for some reason I always get fooled into thinking that because they are using Mythic code designers for PVP, the game should be good as well for PVP....but the guys that originally setup DAOC are the ones we need, not the ones that just float between other games like Failhammer and the now soon to be failwars. Its sad to say, but this game will have similar life to war...or rift. Lots of hype, but so many things wrong, my server has already gone from 15-20min log-in, to heavy on prime time. And the zones which already felt like ghost towns, have gone to 40'ish per zone, with 20 on each of the instanced zones (*** are you thinking Bioware.....Instanced world zones...How stupid?) My plan is just to finish out my story quest and treat the game as I Dragon Age (great games, but only good for 1 go through for me)

Edited January 5, 2012 by Grometsc

[Jaztik]

No question, the best pvp was Ultima Online. Epic, server-wide world pvp. Intense, personal, with big winners and big losers.

[DarthBathory]

You know what I want to do in The Old Republic? I want to take a group of Siths or Jedis whatever go into enemy planet and attack the enemy towns. Or defend Dromund Kaas for the empire against a task force of Republic Commandos. I want to do that, but wait. We can't even if we could there are lvl 50 champions who can kill you in one shot. In a game that has almost no death penalty why couldn't we do that?

 

The thing is though the Casual gamer will get pissed at things like that. I remember in WoW when i played some time ago when it was good. Me and a few friends would walk through duskwood and randomly get chopped down by Undead hordes who end up going straight to the local town hacking at everything. Everyone and there grandmothers are alerted that Duskwood is being attacked. So we have to call to arms and fight them off. I love giant PVP worlds.

 

SWTOR isn't perfect yet. The Warzones are an amazing idea and I loved it but there needs to be much more PvP other than the mini-games. The idea of Ilum being a PvP world is a start and a great idea however it be more fun if all the planets can be accessed to both factions. Not saying that lvl 50s should be allowed to go to Korriban but maybe some minor restrictions of course.

 

I'm not putter these three in any ranks because there isnt a perfect rank but these games I thought have amazing PvP: World of Warcraft, Runescape, and EVE.

 

WoW- I already mentioned above

 

RS - I know it sounds like a joke but this game used to be really good around..03 04? They have a very brutal PvP system likely influenced by UO where if you die you lose everything you have. PvP was very serious in the game, I remember there were many guilds and clans who were just PvP clans who tried to benefit from pking and picking up loots. The game suffered for months when they removed PvP surprisingly for a while.

 

EVE - EVE is probably the most complex game you can play. My clan once tried to get into EVE for a while and it was so hardcore on the grind and it was hard to get into but the PvP from what I saw is really awesome. Probably the best PvP you could ask for.

Edited January 5, 2012 by DarthBathory

[Caeliux]

1. SWG 2005-2006

2. Warcraft TBC days

3. Warhammer

 

 

I have not touched SWTOR open-world yet so we will see.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Caeliux

[IronGriffon]

tldr: Wall o' text crits for 209432

DAOC, Shadowbane, UO, classic Alterac Valley

+ I would like to see ability to mix it up through different roles / vehicles

+ large scale combined arms tactic / objective based pvp is fun

-Huttball kinda sucks

 

A Wall of Text glares threateningly at you.

 

Best- probably DAOC. I loved the scale of it, and implementation of siege weapons and tactics. Large open spaces provided small group, solo ganking, and zerg options. Also, a 3rd faction is good for balance. Overall, I didn't really enjoy the mmo all that much as an mmo compared with others, but I loved the pvp. I'd also add Shadowbane as a worthy mention for town creation and ownership and the soon following town destruction and pwnership.

 

I really enjoyed the exhilaration of UO's early lawless days. Full, open pvp can be intense and engaging, but I think, personally, I nowadays prefer something a bit more structured and less gank prone. In UO, I farmed for weeks to buy a house which was promptly broken into and looted by some guy who killed my friends inside and took all their gear. This included the keys to the house. It was unrestricted internet banditry of the worst kind. On one level it was probably one of the worst moments in my video game history. But, at the same time, it was exhilarating, frustrating, awesome, and exciting all at once. Getting a posse together to hunt down and destroy the guy who did this was singularly satisfying among all the games I've played. Although I look back and am glad that there are somewhat safer pools to swim in nowadays, only an open world like this can produce what I consider a meaningful level of strife and discord. Quite appropriate for a game with Sith, I'd imagine.

 

I also enjoyed some of WoW's pvp BG's and open world pvp. Tauren Mill had many excellent battles raged across it's fields. The spontaneous nature of large group world pvp is a lot of fun. There were no objectives, bonuses, or real incentives at first, just two towns and a willingness to kill the other side. As an aside, sadly, swtor keeps the factions quite separate on many worlds, preventing this. I'd change that.

 

My favorite instanced, team based pvp would be the first generation of Alterac Valley.

Overall, I prefer large scale, objective based pvp, either in open world or in instanced areas. Where some players may see a zergy clusterfunk, I see a chance to use tactics, teamwork, organization and eventually, triumph. Having large groups all working together in a even slightly organized fashion is an epic and awesomely fun event in my op. A great example would be from classic Alterac Valley bringing all the optional forces to bear, elemental versus elemental, making the final push into the enemies base for the big win (3+ hours later). It was more than just sit at this capture point (sitting in a capture area ala Arathi Basin, or Alderan is ok, but pretty unimaginative nowadays). Classic AV had several side objectives, which often all needed to be attended to while trying to push towards the enemy's base. Too bad the current lag on a normal swtor BG terrifies me of larger scale pvp.

 

I also prefer the ability to mix it up in my role and playstyle. One of the main gripes I have with mmo's is that you are stuck with your character and it's more or less defined playstyle throughout. In a lot of other pvp type games such as shooters ala planetside, you can either swap out gear, or hop in a vehicle to change your role and what you do. In many mmos, short of an alt or respec, this simply isn't possible. For now, I've gotten #1 on damage, kills and or objectives so many times with my bounty hunter, that frankly, it's getting stale running around 1, 2, 3, 4ing again and again and seeing my name at the top. It's one of the things that eventually makes me log out of swtor and fire up a game like BF3 where I have "true choice" on how I want to play. In swtor I'd love to be able to hop in a vehicle, turret, other role, or whatever, just not spam same few abilities over and over, level by level. You can mix up the maps, and add new angles like buttball, but your character is still the same as ever, with the same abilities and role, unchanging, somewhat stale.

 

My least favorite example of pvp is probably huttball. Mostly because I can't opt out of playing it when I queue. If I could play from time to time, when the mood struck me, it'd be fine, but forcing it on us... damn those dirty hutts!

[Lazyllama]

Seems to me the crowd likes massive world PvP on an epic level, the amount of times I saw DAoC mentioned is kind of scary, I never played it but seems from all the feedback I hear about it that the game was amazing. If only there was a way for developers to see what all the PvPers are asking for.....

[Stavroz]

For Skill UO hands down was the best MMO for PvP

 

For guild v Guild Shadowbane siegeing mechanic was unbelievable.

 

EVE online was awsome as well.

 

I did enjoy WOW and WAR to be honest as well as AoC although PvP system in AoC was complete fail as was the end game.

[vipeka]

Darkfall and UO.

[kautostar]

NEOCRON

 

It was by far and away the best pvp I played in a mmo. The sheer rush you got from the a quality op battle, spending all day fighting over the map or just randomly been jumped I have never found again in a mmo.

 

Its a shame that KK were so inept but they were a tiny company, the sync crashes, exploits et etc. Still the pvp kept me going back for more each time.

 

Saturn vet here.

[ActualFantasy]

Ultima Online Factions.

[Speno]

If you did not answe DAOC you have never played it. By far the BEST pvp MMO ever made. To think that any other game could compete is silly.

[AlkalineKitten]

DAOC.

 

But.

 

I admit for a biased nostalgia for Old School Alterac Valley.

 

Week long, objective, rivalry inducing battles. Yes, please.

Edited January 5, 2012 by AlkalineKitten

[Shieldsman]

Old School Alterac valley was awesome, my favourite "Battle ground" ever, though i generally perfer RvR and world pvp.

 

Its easy to look at it with rose tinted glasses though, it had alot of problems, like one side allways winning and therefore the winning side having to queue for literally hours to get in. That said it was better than when they introduced cross realm queuing and then suddenly people just cleared it as fast as possible.

 

Its a shame they don't make BG's with that scale anymore, no more 40 man raids either, mainstream MMO's are moving more and more into smaller scale encounters, takes alot of the epicness out of it. I'm hoping the WvWvW in GW2 will reverse this trend.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Shieldsman

[Proto]

Best MMO PvP you ever played?

 

Ultima Online. Close second would be Dark Age of Camelot pre-trials of atlantis.

 

 

Why? Well, UO had no factions (originally) and DAOC had 3. Notice the problem? Two faction PVP MMOs suck.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Proto

[Sookster]

UO was definitely good, SWG was also great and had a very dynamic pvp system until the NGE botched the whole game.

[Mikeabd]

UO pre trammel patch is by far the best pvp game built to date. the only reason it does not appear on this list is because of the amount of people that actually played the game between 1997 and 2001. If the game released today with the same terrible graphics people would see that PvP means a lot more when you have stuff to lose, that gear is not required, just player skill.

 

Not to mention how much more exciting it is to pvp when your death makes a fuc*ing difference.

 

Ive played UO, EQ, DAOC, WoW through every expansion, SWG, AION, Darkfall, WAR Guildwars, and now SWTOR, and I can say that it is sad that pvp from a game that released in 1997 was more memorable than any pvp from that point in time.

[Sithmud]

SWG

 

 

I miss it

[Ruinal]

Darkfall actually. Aside from the hacks and macro abusers, some of the most epic and rewarding pvp I've ever experienced. UO at launch comes a close 2nd. DAOC ties with AC darktide at 3rd. Sw:tor pvp is on a par with Rifts, can be fun, can get some rewards from it, but a bit unsatisfying. Maybe the pvp changes will help, maybe not... we'll see.

[vistram]

NEOCRON

 

It was by far and away the best pvp I played in a mmo. The sheer rush you got from the a quality op battle, spending all day fighting over the map or just randomly been jumped I have never found again in a mmo.

 

Its a shame that KK were so inept but they were a tiny company, the sync crashes, exploits et etc. Still the pvp kept me going back for more each time.

 

Saturn vet here.

 

KK sucked as a company no doubt. Beta4 was probably the best time to be there.

 

The interface/control was THE best I've ever encountered in any MMO and the feeling of an FPS but character skill effected was revolutionary.

 

The exploiters are the only ones left on the servers now I'd wager.

 

I miss hunting players with my libby firing hybrid (when they were viable).

[Xunt]

1: DAOC

2/3: Guild Wars (not really an MMO), Warhammer (the combat system was mostly good for most of the game's lifespan, despite the city / fort system being ****ed for equally as long)

 

 

DAOC commentary:

 

1. DAOC had an effective overarching system because there were 3 realms. Reasonably good internal balancing.

 

2. DAOC had good gameplay options because there were no "rails". The developers didn't add over-engineered microgoals here and tokens there to make you do specific things.

 

Look at how ****** Ilum is -- players want "TOKENS" and **** to drop in Ilum to make it "worthwhile". Players do Warzones only because they give commendation tokens. Everyone and their brother wants *********** tokens as a reason to PvP, instead of simply killing players because it's fun.

 

In DAOC, you simply got points for doing the one thing common to all PvP: killing *********** players. None of this clicking on chests in Tatooine ********. No retarded medal farming "hey let's stand in the acid pit more". No clicking gimmicky objectives on Alderaan.

 

You kill players, you get points. Period.

 

3. DAOC PvP had a greater purpose -- relics that mattered. No game since has implemented an overarching reason for your entire faction to cooperate to WIN THE GAME. Although it has to be said: relics had a significant impact on PvE. And this is probably why we will never see a similar system for WoW/Rift/SWTOR or any PvE-centric game.

 

4. Gear. DAOC gear, for a very long segment of its life, was easy as **** to get to a competitive level. During vanilla, you did your epic quest, gg. During SI, you talked to a crafter and paid a few hundred gold. During ToA (**** TOA) you ****ed your ******e with a sharp object. After they nerfed TOA, it was a short grind.

 

 

 

Additional note on #2: This is pretty significant IMO, because this may never change for MMOs in the future. Specifically, Mythic was lazy as **** and simply bad at making their "content". They were too haphazard to go and "MAKE RAILS" like Trion, BioWare, Blizzard.

 

Modern developers sink a lot of development and QA time into creating things like 47 different tokens, finely-tuned token acquisition rates and gear acceleration and titles and rewards and map markers and objective capture times and ... get the picture? Developers nowadays over-engineer the games.

 

They call it "features" and "content". What it does is force players to min/max their "TOKENS PER HOUR".

 

Back in DAOC's day, the devs were lazy *****es working out of their garage. Not really, but at that level. PvP in DAOC was barebones and simple: kill players, collect RP. Kill door, kill lord, take keep. Keep helps you kill players, collect RP. Did I mention killing players and collecting RP?

 

The system was absurdly simple. This means that players are the ones who decided how they wanted to play -- did they want to StealthZerg™? 8-man roam? Zerg that milegate? Camp Darkness Falls? Any of the above, because they all involved ... get this: KILLING PLAYERS, COLLECTING RP.

 

Nowadays, developers try to tune rewards for zerging, roaming, camping, ganking. If you played Warhammer, you saw this -- keep trading, because players try to optimize RP/hour. Because devs tried to "incentivize" keep warfare. What do we do in Ilum? Trade caps. What do we do in Huttball? Farm medals. We don't PvP anymore, because the developers give us "TOKENS" and micro-objectives, and zone quests.

 

None of which involve killing players.

 

Developers are trying too hard at all the wrong things.

 

Mythic didn't try hard when they made DAOC. They let the players try hard after they lucked out with a solid PvP system.

 

Sigh.

 

 

/signed

[VertisReaper]

swtor best pvp i ever played, super responsive, balanced, and competitive. Edited January 5, 2012 by VertisReaper

[ursusarctus]

DAOC for me , hope Guild wars 2 to be good.

 

I also hope that Swtor will eventually get fixed and we gonna have some good ole world pvp

[Kidkidd]

Planetside!

 

followed closely by daoc

[Jaysun]

DAoC was/is/always will be the best PvP/RvR out there.

 

Unless some other game comes out with a system close to theirs which hasn't happened in 12 years so far, so it is doubtful. *sad face*

 

Hibs ftw! (I liked the underdog >.>)

 

^

 

this.. loved my Valewalker!