In the Community Spotlight this week, MMORPG.com's Mike Bitton has chosen a discussion that dovetails nicely with Bill Murphy's column about the same thing: Have battlegrounds in MMOs ruined PvP? Weigh in on the discussion on our forums after reading some of the community responses to that question here.

Battlegrounds? Oh right I play EVE now where all of it is PvP.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Without a doubt.

I first started online gaming with CS 1.6 and DOD. Those games were nothing but instanced PVP. When I discovered instanced PVP in fantasy MMOs, it was a dream come true. I love instanced PVP. I love gearing up and improving my character in PVE (and also doing a little open world PVP on the side), and then joining an instanced PVP match to test my skills.

The focused closed beta tests in WAR were the absolute best PVP experience I ever had the pleasure of participating in. Next would be the scenarios in WAR. After that be DAOC.

I personally think instanced PVP adds a lot to any MMO. It's quick and simple action that deviates from the normal grind and gives players a chance to test their skills.

It is bad for EQ II when PvP servers have access to EQ II's BGs.

On top of this add all the instanced content and the instant travel options now (no more waiting the EXTREMELY LONG FIVE MINUTES, /sarcasm, wait time at wizard spires), there is less open world PvP.

Oh boy, someone jumps on top of me all buffed and in amazingly overpowering PvP gear and I have no chance of killing them.

Yay world PvP.

The best PvP system of all time was in Ultima Online during the Factions PvP cycle.

By this point, the world had already been split between Trammel and Felucca so PvP was 100% optional.

Because there were no levels or gear, you almost always had a fighting chance to defend yourself.

It was 100% open world and actually had a meaningful and fun territorial capture/control system. Your faction was competing for dominance over controlling the various cities in the game.

It also had more then two factions so balance was never completely lop-sided.

The real problem is that now adays PvP is completely black and white - it's either open world / FFA gankfest or instanced FPS matches, with NO ONE thinking outside the box to give meaningful open world PvP that is not a gank fest and is not forced FFA or any other such crap.

All MMOs, even the quote "sandbox" ones are just huge grind fests be it levels or skills etc. 

It's our own fault too, if you even talk about removing linear progression (grind) and actually making a true sandbox game again that would support real open world PvP... the forumites run you out of town with pitchforks. 

People cannot comprehend why you'd play a game where you didn't level up or get better gear... hell, this plague has even infected all the modern FPS games too - they too are now all about gaining levels and purchasing new gear etc. 

It's pathetic. 

It's like it has become impossible for people to game for the sake of gaming, no they have to be rewarded and told they are special every 5 minutes. 

It depends on the type of battlegrounds. The current ones, yes it has had an adverse effect. The ones in daoc have no limit on the people that can enter. There is no set number of players, no queue to wait in. It is kind of like instanced open pvp, lol. Kind of an oxymoron, but that is basically what it is. Probably only works since there are 3 factions, so an imbalance in numbers is not detrimental.

battle grounds have brought some order to pvp. you no longer see high levels ganking noobs out side start areas in games with battle grounds. i would say its saved pvp and whats ites supposed to be and was meant to be.... somethign enjoyable for a change.

there is no joy in ganking low level players with your extremely high level swords doing around the 2k dmg mark utterly cleaning off the newbs 300hp health.

not to mention no honour in it either!!!

also battle grounds are marked on the map meaning those that dont wish to be forced into pvp can simply travel round them.

battle grounds have saved pvp in most mmo's i am rather fond of the war battle grounds level restricted granting fair pvp to the required lvls.

nothing worse then going into pvp and seeing the guy trying to mame you is roughly 50 levels above you. thats not pvp. thats griefing!!!

Originally posted by mecher

Battlegrounds? Oh right I play EVE now where all of it is PvP.

 

LOL what?? PvP in Eve sucks, not to mention it takes forever.

Originally posted by Adamai

battle grounds have brought some order to pvp. you no longer see high levels ganking noobs out side start areas in games with battle grounds. i would say its saved pvp and whats ites supposed to be and was meant to be.... somethign enjoyable for a change.

 

there is no joy in ganking low level players with your extremely high level swords doing around the 2k dmg mark utterly cleaning off the newbs 300hp health.

 

not to mention no honour in it either!!!

 

also battle grounds are marked on the map meaning those that dont wish to be forced into pvp can simply travel round them.

battle grounds have saved pvp in most mmo's i am rather fond of the war battle grounds level restricted granting fair pvp to the required lvls.

nothing worse then going into pvp and seeing the guy trying to mame you is roughly 50 levels above you. thats not pvp. thats griefing!!!

 

Actually, there is fun in it, the fun of slaughter real people, while they are helpless. Its real good fun... that is if your evil..

Battlegrounds are awful. L2 and DAoC now that was great pvp.

Some of the best times I ever had was when I was playing UO and was a member of the Council of Mages faction. When me and 2 other guys defended out castle against like 10 or so enemy players. We had the whole 300 thing going. We held them off at the bridge leading up to the castle and they could only come at us 2 at a time (collision detection FTW!). It was pretty amazing and as far as PvP in MMORPGs, was probably my best experience. We were severely outnumbered but because of skill and terrain advantage, we were able to held off the attack.

I remember back in my Planetside days, we were defending a base against The Terran Republic and New Conglomerate, I was on the Vanu Sovereignty side, for hours. I eventually went to sleep, logging off inside the base. When I logged on the next morning, we were still defending the same base!

These types of experiences, you remember years later. Battlegrounds cannot offer the same as there is no permanance to them. They are just quick games without any real meaning.

Personally I love BGs, but then again I only do them every once in awhile for a change of pace. I think every game that has PvP should have BGs as an alternative so people can have a change of pace from Arena. or when Open World PvP isn't viable.

Originally posted by braingame007

Personally I love BGs, but then again I only do them every once in awhile for a change of pace. I think every game that has PvP should have BGs as an alternative so people can have a change of pace from Arena. or when Open World PvP isn't viable.

 i have to agree that i've had some of the funnest times ever playing BGs. wile world pvp can be fun with it's unpredictable sponteneity it's seldom fair and/or balanced. sure we've all loved the pvp raids on opposite faction cities but most of the time it was just a huge chaos with one team steam rolling everything.

yes world pvp can be fun, but BG are definately fun on a more regular basis because the nubers and objectives are somewhat balanced.

i dont think BG have destroyed pvp, if anything they have evolved pvp from random world ganking in zergs to balanced and fun controlled encounters.

Part of the argument seems to be a reasonable protest of the constraints of arena-style PvP, while part of it seems to be a thinly veiled whine about a lack of noob-ganking.

Somewhere in between, I'm sure there's a market for creative solutions.

I normally dont troll but this time i need to just a little...

The mighty WoW aka ever-grind ruined the pvp scene alot IMO. And the "kids" who only played wow and think its the first mmo ever, sadly never tried any good/fun pvp and all the can relate to is the instances fixed same 4 pvp maps in wow. And those map type pvp bgs i sadly being copied by alot of mmo´s now, because if they wanna snatch some wow players they need the same bgs as WoW because thats what they think is pvp :D

Before WoW we had games like daoc, lineage ultima online with good pvp...

I have played mmo´s for 12+ years and no newer mmos have had any pvp that could match those old pionering mmos that started the whole genre. ATM i play Rift the game is nicely made, bug free and has alot of cool features but i was sad to discover they copied all the wow BGs also :/

IMO the mmo´s who has some potential in some kind of world pvp should have BGs also, preferred bgs like daoc has, not wow type bgs. But they should remove the bgs for 45-50 if thats max like in Rift ex.

Just my thoughts

open world pvp always just favored ganking, backstabbing, cheating, griefing and camping. loads of time and resources for the devs and staff. you cant have reasonable pvp mixed within pve environments without pissing of both sides constantly.

With a new mmo where evr1 is leveling world pvp is fun and can be very entertaining, later on when top gear sets are deceding the outcome and you get farmed with lesser gear or getting farmed when playing an alt, it boring and iam done with that crap.

How many times your on a escort quest or farming your last mats before work / bedtime / family time you get ganked over and over and over again, always by the nolife griefers who think its fun.

Battleground are balanced for the most part, and its about objectives where you need teamwork for.

I liked World pvp when i was a younger mmo player, but in the days we live now where free playtime is limited iam done with the whole griefing and ganking concept of mmo's.

Originally posted by ironfungus

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Without a doubt.

what he said