Developers Corner

My votes go towards:

Past: Asheron's Call - Darktide

Present: Guild Wars

Future: Darkfall

Past:  UO all the way man!

Present:  Current games have PvP?

Future:  You know the one.

Ok I just felt like posting.  UO with all its flaws had a real sense of danger when you ran into ruthless players out in the wilds.  It was pretty easy to avoid them if you were alert but it was easy to get killed too.  It just kept you on your toes.

Past: UO

Present: UO

Future: WAR hopefully .. but probably UO.

UO... end debate! best pvp ever

current...ummm

Future, all depends on whats realy vapor and whats not.

   agreed Past ..UO

                 Presesnt UO

                 lol future will probably sadly be UO

                 Always was a great sense of danger in the UO world really wish some of the current developers would look at this system closely and pull all the good out of it .

Past: Old School Dark Age of Camelot

Current: None really

Future: Dunno.  It's up in the air. 

There is a difference between what hardcore players call pvp, and what pvp players call pvp. For hardcore players, pvp is just the risk to loose the items you spend weeks and months to acquire. The feeling of danger and anxiety resulting is what they call pvp. However, the conditions are not fair : gear and level advantage, number advantage (gank), etc... ultimately it is your character who decide of the outcome of the battle, not you. Hence I believe that this isn't what pvp is really about as far as we are talking of interesting gameplay.

Gameplay-wise, Guild Wars is the best for me. I don't need to explain more... it is like playing chess in real time in a fantasy setting. Although hardcore players don't recognize it as pvp because of its cooperative/competitive nature, the excitement comes from the gameplay which reward player skill. There is a real learning curve, and as explained in the new topic I started "Player skill vs Character skill", the feeling of accomplishment comes from this. You have to use your brain to win, and this has nothing to do with the hardcore (i.e. grinding) mentality. Although I didn't play UO, I think that gameplay-wise GuildWars is better.

That being said the next pvp game for me could be Darkfall or Fury. Warhammer Online is interesting too and I will try it to compare its advancement mechanics to WoW, I wonder how they will "fix" faction imbalance. What I am really looking for however is a "pure pvp" game, with a ladder and a good matching system (similar player skill), competitiveness at a pro level to enjoy the replays, multiplayer or single-player, with a good interface (no radar, no numbers, no clickfest) good animations with environmental effects, and most importantly "very good balance" with a lot of viable strategies.

Past: UO of course!

Present:  Probably still UO though i haven't played in years.  Shadowbane aside from that.

Future:  Vaporware all the way.  Darkfall and Trials of Ascention.  2 games we'll likely never see but who have the best PvP gameplay since UO.

Past: Played UO, still gonna have to say original DAoC

Present: It all sucks. Default is Guild Wars, I suppose.

Future: WAR = Original DAoC

If WAR is done right, it will bring RvR back onto the main stage. If not, there's always hope Darkfall will move past the vaporware stage. Haven't seen anything else that I'm too hopeful about.