Best MMO PvP you ever played?

I'd like to point out the post is called "Best MMO PvP you ever played?"
Not the best launch you ever played.

Best PvP I ever played is Arena PvP in WoW.
Haters gonna hate but deep inside most people who gave Arena a fair shake know it's true, even though there is a lot of denial on this topic, which is understandable since Arena actually rewarded skill like no other gamemode in any other game and the lesser gifted players couldn't brain-afk their way to gear and prestige(excluding warriors ).

I never played Guild Wars though.

While I had some pretty sinister, evil fun in Eve, it is not really a fair comparison to classic MMO PvP so I won't say this was the best, it definitely gave me the greatest memories and some of the most fun - and rage - though.

There was nothing like a Troll Zerker in bear mode running at you in DAOC Frontiers... aah. still gives me goose pimples. Fun times.

The phrasing of the topic to me means actual combat mechanics. Not the systems supporting the mechanics.

If you want to talk about PvP systems, yes absolutely EvE is number one. It is the best "world" to PvP in. However the combat is like watching paint dry. While it might have the best PvP system to date, it has easily the worst implementation of combat in any mainstream MMO I have ever played. Unfortunate because otherwise EvE offers everything.

DaoC had a decent PvP support system. Faction based PvP is lite. There is nothing wrong with that, people who like faction based PvP more want a different experience from the game than I do. I respect and understand that choice.

The support system in Shadowbane was no better or worse than Darkfalls. They both were player run communities with city construction and siege mechanics.

UO and Asherons Call had no official support system but they supported vibrant thriving PvP communities with territorial control, turf wars and all that jazz. UO less than AC but in AC the system while not there on the surface actually existed by a lucky accident. Guilds and alliances occupied cities. Massive wars of attrition were fought for control of these cities. Those wars top anything in DF or SB which provided arbitrary mechanics to determine a winner and loser.

I am a proponent of keeping everything in a PVP game as organic as possible. Shooting catapults at a tree to "win" a war is not an organic experience. Fighting an enemy for control of a city for a week until one side reluctantly withdraws because they for one reason or another cannot continue to fight as an organic encounter with a comprehensive winner and loser.

AC had that. DF had it in the chaos cities. UO had it. DAOC did not have it. SB had it on a limited basis.

EvE has it, but again EvE combat is so awful it makes any discussion about Eve irrelevant.

The problem with city sieging in games like SB and DF are that the siege mechanics make actual fighting counter productive to winning the engagement. Yes sometimes the winner is determined outright by a fight, but if the objective can be accomplished by avoiding a direct fight, you are making your end game PvE with PvP interference.

A proper PvP game shouldn't have an end game in a PvE sense. Taking a keep for a relic is PvE with PvP interference. End game should be wars fought between rivals over political disputes related to server resource control/management or epeen. The end game never ends then. That is what you see in Eve, but again, Eve is a dumptruck combat wise

Until Hiretsukan and I became the first level 50 2h Savages(and popularized them) in the game and swung those enormous 5.6(I think) delay axes at the 1.5s haste cap and could 2 man 8 man squads.

Other than the double 2h axe Zerker bug early in final, nothing in DaoC was ever as OP'd as 2h Savages.

You are, of course, talking PRE-LA Nerf, right?

BTW, I hated that nerf, and I wasn't even a Middie (Ranger main).

Anyone that mentions Rift gets an arrow in the knee.

I led a 25 man guild and led a 60 man alliance that disbanded the Goonsquads 3k man guild and 6k man alliance in Darkfall and made them quit the game in droves.

I'd say that is better than 2v2 3v3 or 5v5 NAMPLA (North American Man Pillar Love Association) gameplay.

DAoC just overall was amazing.. I miss it!

I thought the same thing when reading his post.

Hell my brother is a carebear crafter type in almost every game we play, but in EVE he was a griefer... Granted, he was griefing people economically by pricing them out of markets, taking over their supply chains, and funding alts to come in and grief their miners/transports... but that is the beauty of EVE. EVERY aspect of the game is PVP, even the miners and spreadsheet geek traders are playing against other players.

About the only things more "hardcore PVP" than EVE are some of the old MUDS that are still around.
I love when people talk about UO and M59 like they started PvP online.

You want hardcore, have a character you have played for years die on a permadeath MUD because you went afk to bio real quick without recalling somewhere safe.


MMO PVP to me is best shown in the RvR style games, DAOC, Planetside.

The pure individual, skill based, ladder ranked, e-sport type PVP that people claim is shown by WOW arenas is not represented well by any MMO IMO, especially WOW. For those PVPer types you really need to be playing a FPS to showcase twitch or Starcraft to showcase Strat, Tact, and APM.

Someone who claims to honor that type of PVP, and then points to WOW as an example is subject to serious Korean scorn.