Dear King Varian of Stormwind, please explain to me why I should leave the comfort of my beloved farmstead here in the rustic pastures of Elwynn Forest to fight in your endless war against the Horde? What have the Horde ever done to me, my family or my fellow villagers? Why should I deprive young Seth and Anne of a father and my faithful wife Susan a husband, all in the name of your unjust and pointless war?
I refuse to be a pawn of the aristocrats and nobles of Stormwind. I will not sacrifice my life for your or their misguided notion of glory.
Wolfshead
Outlaw of Elwynn Forest
What you just read was a fictional account of how one of my characters in WoW would look at the prospect of going to war given the present situation in Blizzard’s Azeroth with the Alliance versus the Horde narrative. But that letter could also be directed to Tom Chilton of Blizzard, the current king and architect of the WoW PVP system.
For me, PVP in WoW has never really worked. Despite a myriad of gimmicks and enticements, I didn’t take the bait. The reason is very simple: Blizzard has never given me something really worth fighting for that I would want to go up against a fellow player and send them to the Twisting Nether. PVP in WoW is unconvincing, emotionless and contrived.
Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
Part of the problem is the element of risk and danger has been removed from MMOs. Without the ability to fail and experience a sense of loss there can be no commensurate glory and honor. Victory without the chance of failure is a tasteless dish. What is the point of a sanitized world where there is no sting of death or parade of victory?
Today’s bland and meaningless PVP is symptomatic of that kind of thinking. It’s like playing poker for fake money. Without risk, how can there be any reward?
Today we play in safe, sterilized virtual worlds much like the playgrounds of most modern schools in America. Nothing can be stolen. No village can be burned down or built back up. Nobody ever really dies. Nothing ever rusts and nothing ever decays. Every day Mickey Mouse and friends respawn enter a pristine Disneyland. Honestly, aren’t you getting tired of playing that low stakes MMO every day?
What Films Could Teach MMO Developers
I remember the first time I watched Patton, Gladiator and 300. They were very powerful movies that made an impact on me. I bonded with the main characters in those films. After watching them, I daresay I was so pumped up I was ready to kick anyone’s ass if they looked at me the wrong way and I’m a peace loving person.
To those people that think immersion is really not important in MMOs look at the immersive power of those films I just mentioned. It’s really an immersion of emotions. That very same power could be used in a MMO to create enough of an emotional investment that would convince a person like me who’d rather be planting a garden than fighting a battle to get involved in PVP.
The best works of art make you feel. And yes a video game should make you feel something. Feelings are immensely powerful and great motivators. I would need the feeling of anger in order to do violence and it would be in self-defense or for some righteous cause that was worth fighting for.
Concluding Thoughts
There are many millions of people that don’t like PVP the way it is currently implemented in most MMOs and the result is that they simple don’t engage in it.
I am personally not looking for the ultimate PVP experience but the only way I could ever be convinced to do it was if it was made truly compelling beyond the epics for PVP reward scheme that currently exists in MMOs like WoW. Instead reward me in other ways with a virtual world full of drama and conflict that makes me speed down the highway to get back to my computer to log on to see what’s happening.
I’m going to say something that may shock some but here it is: the perfect MMO in my opinion would not be characterized as either PVE or PVP. It would have both elegantly and seamlessly interwoven with each other. But because of the conventional wisdom out there don’t expect this MMO to come out anytime soon.
Sadly, there are timid developers out there just content to keep making more games disguised as MMOs. They aren’t interesting in creating a riveting experience for their players; they just want to play it safe and keep producing more of the same mindless MMO amusement park content.
So until MMO companies can find the courage to create a dynamic virtual world that is so gripping, intense and visceral as to encourage player to participate against other players I and many countless others will remain on the sidelines of your phony cartoon “war”. Until such a time as you either allow me to create or obtain something worth fighting for, I will remain a PVP draft dodger.
-Wolfshead
PvP has become totally separated from the rest of the game. This is the problem.
Even physically – combat takes place in battlegrounds and small scale arenas. I know that people report players of the other faction for griefing because they attacked them while questing. My guildmates did that. Some even said it was simply not appropriate to molest people while questing, not even on a pvp server. Interestingly, some even had a number for griefing: Killing someone more than once in one hour. Because if you want to pvp, go to the battlegrounds, kay? Hum…
This is not only the case in WoW, it also happened to most other MMOs. Guild Wars PvP is great, but it is totally separated from the rest of the game, even mechanics differ by now as it became apparent that it is a totally different game. The game was marketed as PvP game or with PvP being the endgame. But it turned out that most people actually don’t want to pvp. Now the question is, do they abhor any kind of pvp in general or is it rather that this kind of pvp feels like kids playfully beating each other for fun?
Ultima Online: The world was divided in a pvp zone and a pve zone. It is even true for EVE: 49% of all players never ever left “high sec”, and one wonders who did more than occasionally. The pvp areas of low sec are at the fringes of the Empire, and while the activity radar of the map shows the Empire Space glowing red from activity, it seems that not even EVE is an exception when it comes to the…
…”Carebear to Killer” ratio: 90% are carebears.
Yes. Really. Perhaps PvP players just scream louder.
But while apparently everyone claims he wants to pvp, few really want to suffer consequences. MMOs get ever easier in PvE mode, death penalties have been reduced or totally removed by now. PvP death suffers no consequences either.
I am not arguing for harsher death penalties. It is still apparent that a lot got lost in our themepark worlds that try to piss nobody off. So everyone is a hero, everyone is eligible to get everything. We get a lot of trivial errand boy tasks to do, despite being the Heroes of the Ages, the last and best hope of humanity.
I always ask myself the question: How comes Asians can bear pvp mmos? But even they become softer, as death penalties or pvp related loss of gear have become almost abolished in many of the later asian MMO designs.
In case of WoW there is also the contradiction that there is a war, but no reason to kill the other one. And actually Horde and Alliance are working together. They are really trying hard to give us lore reasons to hate the other faction, but I wonder if this will be enough to bring conflict back to the world of Azeroth.
I even doubt that the majority of players actually wants that.
Excellent points as usual Longasc!
You make a great point that MMOs have essentially become amusement parks where the player can pick and choose the ride they want. Look at the various incarnations of Disneyland all over the world; there is a vast difference between “It’s a Small World” and “Pirates of the Caribbean”. I think that’s where MMOs seem to be heading with very little cohesiveness to make it work.
In the beginning of WoW, I played Horde, it was us versus them kind of mentality. It was awesome. These days not so much, sure you got your occasional ganker on PvP server, but it ain’t what it use to be. There was Realm pride back then..not so much these days.
In my experience, PvP degenerates to cycles of ganking in MMOs. I will never enjoy that. Now, set up a level-less system where PvP success is based on my own skills, and we can talk. Until then, the only sort of PvP I’ll be interested in is Team Fortress 2… and notably, I’ve never played that game.
I agree that ganking is the most distasteful thing about PVP. I don’t even consider it true PVP because the ganker is nothing more then a griefer and a coward. Perhaps it should be termed PVV – Player Versus Victim instead.
The ganker can never truly face an opponent of equal skill, instead they must prowl about like a predator looking for the most vulnerable in the herd.
You are correct that the level and gear based systems only help to support that kind of imbalance between the ganker and the ganked.
The ganking form of PVP doesn’t interest me at all and I think it should be discouraged. The only type of PVP I would find worth engaging is would be actual battles that are fought for some noble purpose.
Ganking never interests me either, most of what I call ganking that happens it just players taking advantage of game mechanics to get an almost automatic win.
Either by exploiting the levelling system to get easy kills, or by exploiting the gear system to push the gear difference to such extremes that there is no longer a challenge.
For this reason I would like to see MMO’s start putting in a few hard percentages on hits here and there just to bring the difference between players much closer. This works in PVE too, where often raid geared characters just trivialise elite dungeon mobs. But if those mobs did say a 1 in 6 hit that hit for 2-3% damage+a fixed number the difference between the best and worst geared narrows while the best gear still matters.
I think something similar would work in PVP, although its never going to be fair like Planetside, there a newbie can pick up a shotgun and fire it just as well as a 5 year vet. Everytime though I fail to see how a current MMO would work without the levelling mechanic (swapping level differences for gear differences just shifts the problem)…
Yup. This is the crux with open world pvp. It is never ever fair. Some classes are often just the certain bane of another one, and it is usually many versus one or clearly inferior players.
Back in the days when roleplaying was more common in MMO-RPGs there was also the stereotypical conflict of roleplayer vs playerkiller.
There was apparently no greater glory than not only killing the other player and robbing him of everything, but ideally one also totally destroyed a roleplaying event / gathering. PvP at its worst, griefing says hello. But trying to disconnect PvP from griefing is hard. I mean people nowadays felt griefed as I killed their sometimes even afking bank alts during the Zombie Invasion in Ironforge.
I say: Make MMOs pure PvE games and forget about world pvp. Let people cooperate and not make each other problems.
WoW is *almost* already like that – PvP even on PvP servers got mostly removed by player consensus from the world to the battlegrounds and arenas.
OR…
Open world pvp. No restrictions, exceptions and complicated rules except maybe a few safezones/towns. This is what Darkfall should have become. But unfortunately it did not become much more than the in general positive idea to go back to the roots. This system creates strong bonds and stirs up a lot of emotion.
I still believe that most players are carebears. So far the pure pvp MMOs never got too many subscribers. They probably killed their own playerbase, who knows? 🙂
Running another tangent, even if we did have fair (normalized?) one-on-one PvP, do we really want it in a game where combat is mostly standing in place tinkering with hotbars? Street Fighter works by letting players be mobile and having spatial tactics be highly relevant. Davie Sirlin has written extensively about the strategy and tactics inherent in the SF games, and the Yomi layers of mind games.
We just don’t get that in WoW’s combat engine. Yes, space is kind of important and mind games can be useful, but it’s not nailed down to the same depth that the SF games have been.
You are right. The usual answer is that the game has not been balanced around 1 vs 1 combat. Have you ever seen a warrior kill a paladin? This usually ends in the “you may not use your bubble or healing” debate. 😛
Ultima Online did not determine the abilities of your character, you could train him through the skill based and point capped system whatever way you wanted. One versus one was fair – and that craftsmen could not totally compete with highly specialized fighter types was perfectly acceptable. But they could at least train themselves enough that they had a chance to run away.
In the end it was always many vs one guy. To make sure the victim could not escape. 😉 So much about the illusion of “fair combat”.
You are also right in another matter: The combat system is primitive. It does not have the depth and player skill involved like Street Fighter. This includes Ultima Online – the combat in MMOs is most of the time outright primitive and shallow!
Now enter STO and Klingons, the feared “Viral Matrix” total stun and PvP. Despite all its problems, the game has a strong PvP system. The totally imba “VM” (Viral Matrix) is about as feared a rogue stuns and the fear mechanic of the Warlock. It is even better, as it totally weeds out and stomps noobs. Very much as certain leg sweeps were considered to be imba and “unfair” in Street fighter.
I agree that a team specializing heavily in this ability will kill most pickup-groups soundly and faster than any other team. But an organized team not using VM vs a team that uses it as their core strategy will stomp the VM team, as they have to give up a ton of other strong abilities to get it.
As STO has a very casual nature, I fear that VM (I agree that a max rank 36 seconds stun is too much, also in regards of the mostly helpless mobs in PvE) will be nerfed so much that it will just disappear completely. This means it will disappear completely rather than deliberately getting replaced by other strategies by the free decisions of the players.
So I say even if we get a system that really demands player skill and reflexes, that people will cry havoc and that skill balancing will become driven by the majority of players and/or forum outrage. This also happened to some extent in Guild Wars.
Not only PvP would profit from a more sophisticated combat system, PvE would also become more interesting.
First, what Tesh said!
Second, I think this comes around to my old argument of not being able to please everyone in one title. Development shops want to squeeze market share everywhere they can so they create a game that leans either PvP or PvE and then put a crippled version of the other system into the game. I just don’t think it works.
Have a PvE title and do that the best or have a PvP title and do that the best. Do you really get more players by mixing it? SOE is bringing battlegrounds to EQ2 and I just don’t understand why. It is stated that it brings “more content.” This may be true but couldn’t you, in theory, create more content by taking the developers off creating an entirely new non-existent system and put them to work on content where the tools are already in place?
If it’s not content that a PvE player will bother playing, does it really count? “If a tree fell in the woods and nobody were there to hear it, would it still make a sound?” sort of thing…
Perhaps they are courting PvP players, but yes, that would be better done with a fantastic PvP game. (And for the record, I *really* like the Street Fighter games, and that’s rock solid PvP. I just don’t look for it in MMOs or RPGs, because that’s not why I play them. *shrug*)
My problem is that the entire storyline of WoW is predicated on a conflict between the Alliance and the Horde, yet nothing they have done in this regard is convincing.
I think at least half of the servers for WoW are designated as PVP. So does that really legitimatize the war in the World of Warcraft?
The war is a complete sham. The truth is that players are more like mercenaries and brigands. It’s all about the “me” in WoW and not the “we”.
I’m not convinced it was ever about the “war” anyway. War works fine for games if you’re playing an RTS, detached from the the actual fighting, treating it all as a strategic game. When you go to individual level, war is a very different animal. (This is also why it’s scary to give any one person RTS-like god-like powers over a large military body; they tend to see numbers and strategies, not people… which can be necessary at times, say, storming Normandy, but there’s a price to be paid from your soul for that sort of callous, if unfortunate, reality.)
It works for something like a scripted PvE Call of Duty or whatever FPS the kids are playing now, but when those other soldiers are other *players*, suddenly, the war is humanized. Notably, military training is largely built around training people to ignore that the Other Guys are people, too. When you can empathize with your opponent, war loses its punch, at least if you have any of your soul intact.
The “war” in WoW puts players on those front lines. Not everyone wants to be there. Most just want to play a game. Factional fighting and wars in MMOs are really just for the PvP players, and I think Longasc’s right; that’s simply a smaller audience. It *can’t* affect the PvE players significantly, or they leave. (That’s the problem with open world PvP, in a large nutshell.)
That philosophical gibberish aside, though, even WoW’s PvE is about “me” rather than “we”. Even raids have few drops that players have to roll for, rather than something for everyone like DDO. It’s a greedy, mercenary game, where grouping is done less for the simple joys of playing with other people, and more because you need to use other people to get past group gates, get the best stuff, and see the coolest stories.
So that’s another aspect of what might make PvP more interesting to me; it can’t be something I *must* do, it has to be something that would be *fun* to do in itself, not because of the rewards. Class-based gear-intensive paper-rock-scissors and/or ganking don’t qualify for me.
Reasons for War and Why I should be at the front. Players just will not participate if they don’t have something to bump them over the edge. Imagine a sub-class that you could take, call it soldier, you signup like any military organization (perhaps even upon threat of not doing so). This sub-class would give you many benefits, regular pay, free armour and repairs, food, discounts etc. Then one day you log on and you are confronted with a notice that springs up on your screen. It is a notice of call up, your unit has been called to front line duty and are expected to report to your commander at the front in a specific time allotment. Doing so gains you rank which can increase pay and all the other benefits call these promotions, gain metals and status as soldier who listens to orders, does outstanding service etc. Now don’t show up in a current period of time, you get a second notice, with the stipulation that failure to report in will render you the status of AWOL! No pay, posters with your face as a deserter are hung, guards are order to arrest you on site.
The possibilities really are limitless to what you could do here and still this leaves the player with the option to participate or not, heck you could even through in a miltia unit that allows for only part time service.
As for why the war? Well that also needs to be important. One aspect that seems to be missed here is in PvP games they tend to always assume that there is a war going on in the factions. This does not have to be tensions rise and fall wars and battles fought and peace treaties sign and broken. This allows for factions to fight then make up, borders moved back and forth, players can travel to other realms but need to apply a passport, failure makes them a target etc again the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately I believe that the focus just is not there nor will it be as developers and “publishers” will over look this as a tack-on feature and not something that can be one of their foundation stones for their game.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never thought that MMORPGs have been very conducive to a fair, equitable, and ultimately “fun” experience in a PvP environment (and especially on an open PvP server). The differences in classes and gear they possess (which often equates to time spent in game, which is another matter entirely) often leads to too great a disparity in PvP fights to be fair. And no one wants to play a game when there’s little or no chance of winning (even the computer in WarGames learned from Mathew Broderick that Tic-Tac-Toe was a pointless endeavor . . . ). If “the only winning move is not to play” . . . this bodes ill for the life of any game.
The only place I really DO enjoy a “Player versus Player” experience is in a first person shooter game. In these games everyone has the same choices in weapons and abilities from the start. Here there are no classes (or at least nothing too game breaking, like in Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) and the only thing preventing you from winning is your own skill at the game and not because the person you’re fighting happens to have those ultra-rare weapons and armor pieces giving you no chance of winning, or is playing a class that, although is balanced in a PvE environment, excels or is truly overpowered in a PvP world.
EQ2 is coming out with its own Battlegrounds. Now, I will participate, but mostly as a diversion to PvE, when I’m bored questing, or when I just can’t find a group. Ultimately, though, it will only be another “mini-game” to me, a novelty to be played when the mood strikes me . . . or because I want the PvP gear as appearance (and it DOES look sweet!).
I AM intrigued by your idea of making a game where PvP and PvE are, “elegantly and seamlessly interwoven with each other.” I saw some elements of that in Dark Age of Camelot and (in an albeit failed attempt, imho) in Age of Conan. I just have no idea how they could integrate a game with different classes and “levels” of gear (as is seen in PvE settings); yet have it balanced for a PvP environment. I look forward to the day a game truly accomplishes this feat.
Interesting article. As the alternative side of the coin hasn’t been brought up, I figured I’d do the honors as an avid fan of PvP.
What’s the point to me doing PvE?
I haven’t found a real emotional response to a PvE experience in an MMO since, ever (outside of text-based games). At least not to the story line. I’ve been excited over accomplishing a difficult raid, or obtaining maximum rank in some leveling system. But a response that made me want to partake in the PvE outside of a desire for progression? Never happened.
From my experience, PvE MMOs have reached a point of never-ending futility. Every time I think about going back to EQ2, or WoW, I experience nothing but an overbearing sense of ennui. For what purpose would I return? I have no desire to experience the story, because the story isn’t strong enough to hold my attention. I’m not compelled enough to chase the carrots of reward that unlock access to chase other carrots.
For me PvP allows a dynamic, ever changing form of competition. It means that nothing is ever stale, or safe, or predictable. I will experience soul-crushing lows, stretches of extreme boredom, and glorious moments of amazing victory that drive my forward to seek the next fight.
Bioware is touting story as their main selling point. If it can make me feel engaged, and connected, my opinion may be changed. However, I do not hold any aspirations of this actually happening.
This is why Guild Wars is so brilliant. If you want PvP, you get it, right out of the box.
I really do think that gamers should be able to jump into the part of these MMOs that the like most, whether it’s the long march through the world, raiding or PvP. Why make a raider or PvPer muddle through PvE if they don’t want to? (And vice versa, of course…)
Then we face the problem of a game trying to be all things. That kind of poject scope is nigh-impossible to achieve without major sacrafice elsewhere. While theoretically a good idea, I doubt the practicality if it.
True enough.
Yet, would a PvP-only MMO be economically viable? It seems to me that they almost *must* ride on the budgetary coattails of a PvE monster to share art and engine assets to make it visually and mechanically interesting enough to compete. The PvP audience is simply smaller… but are they as demanding of high quality visuals, solid server tech and frequent updates?
Darkfall is famously the “little game that could”, so it’s not impossible to do, perhaps, but they are also notably not at the same level of polish as even LOTRO or WAR. The core gameplay is better for PvP fans, but even the most devout tend to offer caveats when they promote the game. I, for one, hope that gameplay carries the day, but unfortunately, that’s not what sells in the market at large.
This was also the idea behind Guild Wars – PvP as fun neverending endgame content.
You know how many people in the end PvPed more than occasionally. Not many.
GW also has a much more interesting and team based pvp system than most other MMOs. Or any other, for that matter, if I am allowed to be bold.
But the bulk of players seems to be the casual solo player that does not really want to learn how to pvp or even if he could compete, just does not want to. Or is too lazy to get organized. I am afraid that the competitive MMO players are a very tiny minority, even if many cry all the time for pvp.
– Some people play PvP for other reasons that you do (would). Thats why PvP “works” as it does now. One of many other reasons is they PvP to dominate the other individual, not to win the battle, and dont’ care about the “outcome” or the drama.
– Your quote, “So until MMO companies can find the courage to create a dynamic virtual world that is so gripping, intense and visceral as to encourage player to participate against other players I and many countless others will remain on the sidelines of your phony cartoon “war”.”
I’m afraid there isn’t a single MMO company in your lifetime that will make this game as it won’t produce enough income. So get a good book, you’ll get more rewards for your money.
– The issue at hand is how many people are happy with current MMO PvP. It is about the random number generator and gear disparity. I’m amazed at how many people put up with an unfair fight in all of today’s MMOs. Add to that, level increaseas and a constant gear chase. That is where it gets old, stale and musty.
– Another issue is the amount of AFK botting blizzard has allowed in their battle grounds. No amount of reporting it gets the bots penalized. I mean why should blizzard ban them? It’s $15 a month. It’s like aim botting in first person shooters. It kills it for a person paying attention. For the unawashed masses they don’t know, don’t care. The real PvPers move on.
I do too want something much more then a static battlefield to fight over endlessly.
My vision of something more immersive and rewarding would be having for example starter area where two antagonising races are opposite sides of a zone, towns, mines, dungeons and locations can then be fought over and won/lost depending on the result of PVP fought by the players + NPC’s (PVE+PVP).
Areas held by one faction open up content to them, this gives effectively limited time content, and from experiences in Guildwars where this happened in one area it was very popular.
That then also adds in the ability for the game developers to give both sides a chance to be victors/losers (Attackers/defenders) now and then by altering the number and quality of NPC’s fighting. So if there is a dominant side they can get a stiffer challenge now and then too. This matches real life, often factions get weaker the further they venture from their strongholds.
The ebb and flow can even be dictated by the story or by spawning grounds feeding new forces in (thinking of EQ2 Frogloks vs Trolls), perhaps even seasonal when a mountain pathway becomes crossable or a lake freezes over more factions can join in.
Scale that up then to a world with many factions and the game becomes both complex at a higher level and simple at the lower, just what I am looking for, if only someone would develop it though…