How anyone can include Darkfall in this thread is unbelievable.  The game is barely into beta stage and shows it.  All Darkfall is is an example of how not to write a MMO. 

I would have to put AC1 Darkside, UO, Eve, and DAoC as being the best pvp games to date.

• WoW - Can't say it's very good. Suffers from serious imbalance between the classes as well as a huge powercreep (i.e. the amount of damage you can do compared to to the amount of damage you can prevent/out heal is fucked up so that damage is waaaaaaaaaaay to big).
• EVE - Very hawt, but EVE is also a game that is not for everyone. Not my kind of game it ain't.
• GW - By far the best I've ever played. Mostly so because it's all about your skills, in double sense: what skills your team (you always play in/as a team) is bringing and how skilled you are at using them. Among some things that require skill are qknocking (q as in quarter) which means that you chain two knockdowns so that the target can't cast a 1/4 second spell or dodging projectiles. And while many GW players will complain about imbalance you can put it like this: if GW is unbalanced, no other MMO can be said to have any balance.
• WAR - If you enjoy mindless huge zergs this is the game for you. The keeps feel more like PvP and the defining factor is numbers and healers, the attacking team needs to have many more on their team and many healers if they plan to do something, and the PvP involved is insignificant - all you really need to do is breakthrough two gates and get to a NPC and kill him... The scenarios are just two teams that charge at eachother, sometimes there's an objective involved but it's 90% of the time ignored.

There are other games but I don't feel I can say anything about them. I personally prefer the tactics and skillbased PvP of GW the most. WAR I found to be the very opposite of GW's PvP - there's essentially no skill and no tactics involved in the game at all, there's just zerging.

GW for arena style competitive PvP hands down.

I hear DaoC had a good RvR but atleast WAR's wasn't very good.

I don't care much for FFA PvP so I have no opinion there.

Guild Wars has by far the most fun PvP I've ever expierenced. So I gotta give this one to Guild Wars.

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Originally posted by dark-merlin
 Hehehe AC darktide, the good old days...
 
but seriously at this moment its Darkfall, and when MO will come out it will be there along with it. EVE also, even though I dont play it I respect the PVP guidelines and death penalties.
Guild Wars, War, AoC I consider PVE games
 
EDIT: and the Daoc fanboys, drop the little tag team match that DAOC is, give it a break seriously. In terms of PVP old school Asheron's Call Darktide shits all over DAOC mordred or whichever server you want. There is a reason all the old school PVP guilds, the serious ones, are AC DT vets. No one brags about playing DAOC.

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Shits all over DAOC?

The only thing that was shit was Asheron Call hoppity bullshit made WoW look like standstill pvp....and darkfall is reminiscent of that same Counter Strike Knife Fighting crap you call pvp.

The Best, IMO:

AC1 back in the days, full on clan warfare, items drop on death, harsh death penalties, twitch fps-style gameplay where you could doge arrows/magic bolts, it's a PvP'ers dream really.  It was a game where if you weren't good at twitch, you didn't make it.  A level 70 could kill a level 124 back in the days, so at one time the game was about skill more than level or gear.  It made a difference if you swung high, mid, or low depending on what the other player is wearing or buffed for.  It made a difference what element of weapons/magic bolts you used.  Not only was it twitch fps, it was strategic.  Guilds claimed towns and had to watch over towns to make sure it isn't over-run by rival clans.  Guilds claimed leveling spots & dungeons and again, had to watch over them while people leveled, so it isn't over-run by enenmies.  Great fun.

Unfortunately these days it is about gear & level.

Runner up:

DAOC had and still has the best RvR & siege warfare.  They were one of the first to have a realm vs realm setup with 3 realms going at it.  And still to this date the RvR in DAOC is hard to beat....not even WAR could reproduce it (and it's made by the same company sadly).  Aside from realm point abilities, DAOC had Relics and Darkness Falls, both gave players a reason to RvR and to fight for their realm.

WoW's PvP was at one time pretty good, pre-expansions and pre-BWL.  Back before gear-flation came about, where everybody had a chance at everybody for the most part if played right.  The good players stood out because they could beat classes 1 on 1 and amaze others.  Unfortunately after raid gears started to cycle into the population, it became a gear-based game.  After expansions, you knew what class could beat what class, no questions about it.

Fun, but not necessarily the best:

EQ1 Zek servers back in the days, Sullon Zek for an example, good vs neutral vs evil, 3 sides fighting it out.  Since there were no instances, you couldn't level/gear up in the safety of instanced content like most MMO's offer today.  You had to contest for content to exp, farm, and gear up in.  You had to constantly watch your back, because you never know when a raid is zoning in to crash your party.   You often had to allocate1-2 groups to watch the zone to fight off the bad guys, while the rest of the raid tries to take down a big raid mob.   Death penalties were harsh, because you lost your corpse w/ gear, and you showed up with no mana at all.  So you fought hard to stay alive, none of this well I'll die and respawn bs.

It's important to remember that there are different forms of PvP.  RvR and PvP offer different gameplay, that's why you see people listing different games they like.  Some like instanced battles some don't.  Some prefer mass RvR others prefer small 1 on 1 or small group battles.   So it's kinda hard to say which MMO has best PvP because people prefer different gameplay.

Definitely Asheron's Call 1.  The game's PvP was created through unintentional means.  Essentially, movement/animation exploits allowed for the dodging and manipulation of the game's various mechanics.  But, instead of hindering the game, it made it better.  All of these movement glitches were widely accepted by the PvP community as being the only way to go, and it created an absolutely amazing twitch-based system that has yet to be truly rivaled.

You could dodge projectiles, dodge spells, quick-cast spells.. Hell, there were multiple methods of casting, and it actually took practice and skill to be good at it.  I had fights that would last 30+ minutes sometimes, and would have to rebuff in the middle of fights sometimes.  The fact that you could fight so hard and for so long, only to have a chance at losing something very valuable if you died, is what made it so intense.

Guild politics formed naturally, with guilds warring and fighting over areas.  Even non-PvP servers had some great memories for me in PvP.  3 and 4-way guild wars in Ayan were some of the best times I've had in an MMO.

As far as an overall experience, or a game created for PvP, EVE is definitely king.  Seeing as AC 1's system was completely unintentional, and because the game is practically dead now, EVE would be the next best bet.  It is the only game to pull of legitimately massive scale warfare that matters.  The completely player-driven economy and various systems in the game work flawlessly together to produce an experience like no other.

If only GW had some open pvp with siege warfare, keep sieges-- yeah and JUMPING, that would be hot.

Originally posted by Brif

I'm downloading the Guild Wars trial again, last time I quit immediately because I couldn't jump.

Aion right now has the best, you can try it for free on the chinese retail. there is posts around showing you how to set up an account and what not. seems you like jumping and running around in circles around players. well in Aion its actually a benifit, you gain buffs through moving while you play instead of just being lazy and standing still like a target dummy. side to side or in circles increases your dodge, backing up increases block and parry and forward increases damage.

And they say Aion does not do anything new. Its the little things like that that make the game so good.