PVP and factions are done incredibly cheap,they are done to meet minimum standards,not make for great gaming.

Ever play AOE?It uses 3-4 faction warfare,but the maps are very small,so how do these devs figure making gigantic game worlds with 2-3 factions is ok?What i would like to see is some realism,example a North American faction,a Euro faction,Scandinavian faction,Asian faction ect ect.This is the type of design that would actually encourage good faction game play.It is pretty much what put Eve on the map.I wouldn't consider Eve a good game by any stretch,but it had giant battles invovling homelands,we have all seen how many people get all patriotic over anything even gaming.

A perfect example is EQ2,the PVE version has lots of factions,definitely more than 2 or 3.They obviously know it takes more to make a better game,but like all mmo's right now,the pvp structure is just there,it has no effort put into it at all.

No DAOC is/was not even close to being any good,i think too many old schoolers,just can't let go of their "first" or past gaming.Myself i am always looking beyond to maybe something better,last thing i want is gaming to return to any of the old stuff i have seen,it is all extremely outdated game play.

Originally posted by Wizardry

PVP and factions are done incredibly cheap,they are done to meet minimum standards,not make for great gaming.

Ever play AOE?It uses 3-4 faction warfare,but the maps are very small,so how do these devs figure making gigantic game worlds with 2-3 factions is ok?What i would like to see is some realism,example a North American faction,a Euro faction,Scandinavian faction,Asian faction ect ect.This is the type of design that would actually encourage good faction game play.It is pretty much what put Eve on the map.I wouldn't consider Eve a good game by any stretch,but it had giant battles invovling homelands,we have all seen how many people get all patriotic over anything even gaming.

A perfect example is EQ2,the PVE version has lots of factions,definitely more than 2 or 3.They obviously know it takes more to make a better game,but like all mmo's right now,the pvp structure is just there,it has no effort put into it at all.

No DAOC is/was not even close to being any good,i think too many old schoolers,just can't let go of their "first" or past gaming.Myself i am always looking beyond to maybe something better,last thing i want is gaming to return to any of the old stuff i have seen,it is all extremely outdated game play.

Many of us would disagree with you, however you are entitled to hold a minority opinion in the matter.

Prime BFD does sound like another good attempt to resurrect 3 faction PVP and Planetside 2 as well.

As the OP mentioned, one major component of the success of DAOC's system was the importance  of controlling Darkness Falls.  In the game's later years the dungeon's relevance in terms of making gold became irrelevant, and it did largely devalue the 3 faction PVP system from it's golden age.

Many players like myself will only PVP "for cause" and no, fighting for realm honor isn't that big of a deal.  But put the control of valuable resources or my guilds keep on the line and now I have real incentive to come out and PVP.

Dark Age of Camelot was and still is the only MMO in my opinion to get three way player vs players right. Sure they called it Realm vs Realm but the core concept was three groups of people fighting over castles, keeps, relics and even the dungeon.

Guild Wars 2 might just pull off resurrecting the core concept of DAoC RvR and that was the three groups of people fighting for castles and keeps. I would be so happy to see this style of PvP again. From the few tidbits of information from the developers we know the following of GW2's WvWvW system: each server gets their own home map that are connected with one central map, there are castles, keeps, and various other points to fight over and control, their are supply lines that must be defended (this is mixing PvE elements into a PvP environment), and the ability to level all the way from 1 to 80 purely off WvWvW combat.

Between GW2 and The Secret World it seems three way PvP is returning in some form and I hope both games succeed in bringing it back, it has been sorely missed since DAoC.

The two faction system is the worse construct to hit MMORPG's ever.  It's like asking your game... from design to implementation... to be hampered by balance concerns.

What made DAoC great was three distinctly different realms where no one was the 'evil' ones. Sure, Albion had the luster of Arthur and could easily be viewed as the good guys, but the Hibernians and Midgardians could take equal pride in their realms.

There were plenty of issues with DAoC, and especially balancing became a nightmare as time progressed, but what people miss about DAoC is not only the RvR but also the way it enticed communities to work together for a common purpose. My hunter spent many a night out in Old Emain just scouting and reporting enemy movements, and as long as Midgard reigned supreme I did not care that I hardly earned a realm point all night, and the pride of watching your guild banner fly over a castle made wasting a platinum on wood to reinforce the gate worth the expense.

There were many things that made DAoC special, and three faction RvR certainly is the way to go. I am intrigued by The Secret World and the fact that the seem to have made a persistent PvP zone similar to DAoC's frontier. Final verdict has to wait until release though. Hopefully, Funcom has learned their lesson from the mistakes made on AoC, and implemented better systems on this one.

Once again trumpetting DAoC as the highest evolution of MMOs.  Slow down here champ.

First off you're mistaken if you don't think there was "Good" vrs. "Evil" in DAoC.  THEY CALLED IT DARK AGE OF CAMELOT!  The Albions were the "good guys" fighting to preserve King Arthur's Camelot days against the invaders from Hibernia and Midgard. 

Second there were plenty of DAoC servers where one faction just completely dominated due to population.  There was nothing that magically split the DAoC population into thirds on every server.  In fact there were several where Albs outpopulated the Mids and Hibs put together.  Maybe from time to time the two underpopulated realms could get together and do something, but it was so rare you remember it a decade later. 

Third not every MMO setting or IP lends itself to multiple factions and I think that World of Warcraft has proven that more people play MMOs to PvE than to PvP or RvR.

Fourth those "glory days" where the realms fought each other in DAoC actually lasted about a year.  If you played from launch you know that "realm pride" started to die the day they introduced realm points into the game.  This started the inevitable fall towards Group v. Group rather than RvR (the vaunted 8 mans) and the three faction feel of the game broke down into two realms ... 8 mans v. Zergers.

Fifth if two is bad and three is good than why wouldn't five be the bomb?  Why not nine factions?  Better yet why not everyone be their own little faction ... oh wait .. that's open PvP and that's too "hardcore". 

Please stop looking at it through rose colored LCD screens.  The reasons for DAoC's success have nothing to do with the number of factions etc.  It had to do with the community it drew and the spirit of that community.  Stop giving game mechanics the credit for what we human beings built in a cyber world.  Kindly remember that DAoC wasn't mainstream, was never meant to be mainstream and it released today would be a dud.  It was made for table top roll playing game afficianadoes who had access to the internet, not the twitter kids.

Please let DAoC lie where it belongs in the mass grave of MMO passed and stop dredging it up.  If you like a game mechanic, say you like a game mechanic for these reasons, not because your all time favorite game did it and you're praying someone else will make you DAoC 2.

Sakes.

Originally posted by maskedweasel

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Puremallace

Sooooooooooooo obvious question. How do you make sure one faction does not become dominant? It is easier to split 50/50 then 33/33/33 in a mmorpg. That is why this genre died out and never worked past DAoC

No, actually you are wrong. With two sides, there is nothing to stop the dominant side. With three sides, the two underdogs can cooperate against the dominant side if they so choose.

This is true in 3 faction PvP,  but not necessarily WvWvW  ..such as GW2.    The whole point of their W v W v W is for there to be 1 winner and 2 losers,  so I don't think teaming will be relevant, especially since you only have 2 weeks to win the "battle" before it resets.   With 3 worlds,  1 prize, and no long-term for cooperation its more of a "faction FFA".

 

Prime BFD is the true return of 3 faction PvP.  It still has a long ways to go,  but so far, what they have going on is very promising.

 You bring up a good point about deliberately teaming up, and it's known that GW2 will not allow cross faction communication.

Still, I have to think that there will be checks and balances due to there being 3 factions and 4 zones (one for each faction and a contested middle one).  One server can't invade another's zone without worrying about overextending and being invaded by the third.

GW2 prevents one faction from being dominant by matching each server against different servers at the end of the two week period based on W/L record and population.  Unlike one-server 3-faction PVP, you can't have one faction permanently dominating the other two.  Each time that strong server wins and a weak server loses, their next matches get harder and easier.

The other benefit of pitting servers against other servers is that the server population isn't divided into different factions.  It's not 50/50 or 33/33/33, it's all 100 vs all 100 vs all 100.

Originally posted by cali59

Originally posted by maskedweasel

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Puremallace

Sooooooooooooo obvious question. How do you make sure one faction does not become dominant? It is easier to split 50/50 then 33/33/33 in a mmorpg. That is why this genre died out and never worked past DAoC

No, actually you are wrong. With two sides, there is nothing to stop the dominant side. With three sides, the two underdogs can cooperate against the dominant side if they so choose.

This is true in 3 faction PvP,  but not necessarily WvWvW  ..such as GW2.    The whole point of their W v W v W is for there to be 1 winner and 2 losers,  so I don't think teaming will be relevant, especially since you only have 2 weeks to win the "battle" before it resets.   With 3 worlds,  1 prize, and no long-term for cooperation its more of a "faction FFA".

 

Prime BFD is the true return of 3 faction PvP.  It still has a long ways to go,  but so far, what they have going on is very promising.

 You bring up a good point about deliberately teaming up, and it's known that GW2 will not allow cross faction communication.

Still, I have to think that there will be checks and balances due to there being 3 factions and 4 zones (one for each faction and a contested middle one).  One server can't invade another's zone without worrying about overextending and being invaded by the third.

GW2 prevents one faction from being dominant by matching each server against different servers at the end of the two week period based on W/L record and population.  Unlike one-server 3-faction PVP, you can't have one faction permanently dominating the other two.  Each time that strong server wins and a weak server loses, their next matches get harder and easier.

The other benefit of pitting servers against other servers is that the server population isn't divided into different factions.  It's not 50/50 or 33/33/33, it's all 100 vs all 100 vs all 100.

Well, yes,  AND no..  while you are right its not a fraction of the entire server,  each world isn't 100 percent of an entire servers population either,  its also just a fraction of the participating PvPers.   So balancing will be key in GW2.  If its based on population then those with a low PvP participation will be hurting,  and of course,  server transfers will aid in the complainers to just switch servers at will.   

Thats another thing with factional PvP.  if you get to the top of a server and find you don't like that side,  you can't just flip sides to the winner the next battle (unless its an ffa factional thing, and those really don't work very well).    While it is possible that the battles are smaller when you take an entire server population and cut it into pieces for factions,   3 Faction PvP  has its benefits,  many of which I think will be lost on 3 World PvP.   W v W v W will have its own benefits too,  I'm just trying to point out that 3 Faction isn't 3 World.

Hardcoded factions is crap. I want to decide who my enemies and friends are, not the devs.

Originally posted by Yamota

Hardcoded factions is crap. I want to decide who my enemies and friends are, not the devs.

There are already games out there that do that,   and those games largely haven't done very well.  

I like both types of games,  but find that the PvP is more enjoyable when you have a defined enemy rather than running the risk of having everyone be your enemy,  or having no one be.

Originally posted by muaddib101

Yeah, world vs. world sounds awesome! I mean, if you like the idea of herding cats, which is basically what large scale PvP like this winds up being. Anything over 100 people just winds up being mass chaos (and even 100 people is pushing it most of the time).

 

 You know cat hearding is one of my hobbies. In all seriousness though I truely enjoy large scale PvP outside of FPS games because of the chaos. Its just plane fun to watch 100+ people firing spells, guns, arrows, or what ever at eachother. Who said war was organized anyways!

Originally posted by Tanemund

Once again trumpetting DAoC as the highest evolution of MMOs.  Slow down here champ.

 

First off you're mistaken if you don't think there was "Good" vrs. "Evil" in DAoC.  THEY CALLED IT DARK AGE OF CAMELOT!  The Albions were the "good guys" fighting to preserve King Arthur's Camelot days against the invaders from Hibernia and Midgard. 

 

Second there were plenty of DAoC servers where one faction just completely dominated due to population.  There was nothing that magically split the DAoC population into thirds on every server.  In fact there were several where Albs outpopulated the Mids and Hibs put together.  Maybe from time to time the two underpopulated realms could get together and do something, but it was so rare you remember it a decade later. 

 

Third not every MMO setting or IP lends itself to multiple factions and I think that World of Warcraft has proven that more people play MMOs to PvE than to PvP or RvR.

 

Fourth those "glory days" where the realms fought each other in DAoC actually lasted about a year.  If you played from launch you know that "realm pride" started to die the day they introduced realm points into the game.  This started the inevitable fall towards Group v. Group rather than RvR (the vaunted 8 mans) and the three faction feel of the game broke down into two realms ... 8 mans v. Zergers.

 

Fifth if two is bad and three is good than why wouldn't five be the bomb?  Why not nine factions?  Better yet why not everyone be their own little faction ... oh wait .. that's open PvP and that's too "hardcore". 

 

Please stop looking at it through rose colored LCD screens.  The reasons for DAoC's success have nothing to do with the number of factions etc.  It had to do with the community it drew and the spirit of that community.  Stop giving game mechanics the credit for what we human beings built in a cyber world.  Kindly remember that DAoC wasn't mainstream, was never meant to be mainstream and it released today would be a dud.  It was made for table top roll playing game afficianadoes who had access to the internet, not the twitter kids.

 

Please let DAoC lie where it belongs in the mass grave of MMO passed and stop dredging it up.  If you like a game mechanic, say you like a game mechanic for these reasons, not because your all time favorite game did it and you're praying someone else will make you DAoC 2.

 

Sakes.

I actually took the time to read through that.  About the only thing I can say you wore blinders during your entire time playing DAoC.   The success was all due to the 3 faction system, the community grew around that.  The downfall of DAoC was trials of Atlantis because it gave those with inordinant amount of time to devote to long quest chains a huge advantage in pvp. The exodus from the game started about 4-6 months after release of the expansion, after promised changes did little to fix the problem. 

I played on a bunch of the servers and never experienced any situation where one faction outnumbered all the others.  If there was one, it would have been easy to move to another server.

The only thing I can say about what you wrote is that it was entirely wrong, it was still the best implementation of an open pvp environment for a couple years.

Blinders?  Ok, you call it, pot or kettle.  I should have known better than to try and talk sense to a rabid fanboy with no objectivity on the subject.

Lets just start here.  How can you say that not every IP lends itself to three faction warfare is false?  Obviously you DIDN'T read the whole post.

Also I said that realm pride 'STARTED TO DIE" with the implementation of realm points.

Frankly I could go on and on, but I'm wasting time on you.  You'll never see past your own nose on this topic, which is just too bad since you're supposed to have some kind of objectivity. 

I understand you loved it.  Maybe you broke your maiden on it?  I did.  I loved it, but I understand the game didn't love me back and it wasn't the best thing ever to grace the intrawebs with it's presence.  The game you love DIED in 2004.  It's time to let go ... let go!

Originally posted by Wizardry

No DAOC is/was not even close to being any good,i think too many old schoolers,just can't let go of their "first" or past gaming.Myself i am always looking beyond to maybe something better,last thing i want is gaming to return to any of the old stuff i have seen,it is all extremely outdated game play.

 I completely disagree, but like someone else said, your entitled to your own opinion.  Yes, I am an old school gamer, but I am also open to new ideas and "looking beyond to maybe something better" as well.

Unlike yourself, I considered DAoC one of the best games at the time.  I still believe that their RvR, three faction, system was the most enjoyable PvP play I have had to date (by far).  Yes, it is outdated in the graphics/UI department, but that is because it is 10 years old!  I would still stack their classes (the MOST of ANY game I have ever played) against any current or former MMORPG.  I mean WoW barely has a third of what DAoC has.  You would think with all the friggin money, they could develop some more classes (and no more pathetic races, who cares...)  A hunter as a night elf is the same as a hunter as a werewolf IMO.

Cheers!

Originally posted by Tanemund

Blinders?  Ok, you call it, pot or kettle.  I should have known better than to try and talk sense to a rabid fanboy with no objectivity on the subject.

 

Lets just start here.  How can you say that not every IP lends itself to three faction warfare is false?  Obviously you DIDN'T read the whole post.

 

Also I said that realm pride 'STARTED TO DIE" with the implementation of realm points.

 

Frankly I could go on and on, but I'm wasting time on you.  You'll never see past your own nose on this topic, which is just too bad since you're supposed to have some kind of objectivity. 

 

I understand you loved it.  Maybe you broke your maiden on it?  I did.  I loved it, but I understand the game didn't love me back and it wasn't the best thing ever to grace the intrawebs with it's presence.  The game you love DIED in 2004.  It's time to let go ... let go!

 

 You call him a fanboy, yet you are the one with emotion-filled posts.  Exactly who appointed you as the grand scholar to "try and talk sense" to us, the uneducated masses?  You have an opinion, and unfortunately you are entitled to it.  But its just that, an opinion.

There were many problems with DAoC, yet there were fair more things they did right; things that any mmorpg today could learn from.  I am sorry you had such a bad experience with DAoC, but based on what I have seen here and elsewhere, there are far more people who loved it and will hold some if its features as the gold standard to be met in any new mmorpgs.

Oh  and one other thing . . . Someone got rolled in RvR.

I had high hopes that Warhammer 40K: Dark Millenium would use more than the standard and stale 2 factions... afterall it's IP is basicly everyone against everyone (with occasional temporary alliances for 1 specific goal) in a chaotic carnage of battle, which other game would be better for it??

Who knows? Maybe 1 or 2 months in official alliance with the Eldar against a rushing horde of Oks and Chaos... which happened to hit a Tau settlement planet and the Dark Eldar hiding base... meanwhile the Tyranid NPCs show up attacking everyone...

Then on the next month the Orks resented Chaos using them as cannonfodder, the Tau found out that some Dark Eldar did some sneaky backstabs while the Eldar got displeased by the Empire's excessive use of force...

In a word... shifting alliances

Probably too much hopefull... but way better (to me atleast) than "Order vs Chaos"...

I fear for the Warhammer 40K MMO mostly because they have made it only 2 faction......

 

Originally posted by Master_M2K

Originally posted by snapp69

Once again Planetside was failed to be mentioned

That's because Planetside is simply more of an FPS game and less of an MMORPG.

Anyways, I cannot wait to experience GW2's 3 server PvP, because the concept is entirely new to me and from what we know, it seems to be very promising.

It's an MMO nontheless. Thing was most mmoRPG players where whining their asses of when they played planetside, complaining about cheating and exploiting when they failed to hold their rifle straight.

Oh  and one other thing . . . Someone got rolled in RvR.

 

This?  This is the best you've got?  Yeah, you really told me didn't you, you two Twinky and a Mountain Dew Dinner llama.  Here are a couple of tips to help you acclimate back into society when EA has the common decency  to pull the server's plugs out of the wall and consign DAoC to sweet cyber oblivion and you get done pining for a DEAD GAME!

1. You're not really a Vampiir, so go outside and get some sun.

2. You can't grind faction with women online.

3. 16 level 50 toons.   Really?

4. Trolling you "DAoC was teh bestest evah" wads is like watching a chimp playing with a bic lighter; at first it's kind of cute and amusing but pretty soon it just smells like burnt chimp, which is pathetic.

Stop embarrassing yourself.  I've watched you guys bend over backwards trying to point to the game mechanic that made DAoC great for years and in all honestly it's gone past pathetic to annoying. 

I'll keep saying this until I die and I'm right, which is why you can't stand it.  The game was good because the people playing it made it good.