I'm always researching mmorpgs, looking for that one game... but aren't we all?

Yes, I dig open pvp, not that I am a ganker/greifer, but I like that to be a possibiltiy when I'm out doing whatever in the world.. it keeps you on your toes, ready, and slightly fearful that a group will come up outta nowhere and jump you.

While researching plenty of games with this open pvp, they have now been adding rules/laws into the game that try to keep the non pvp people happy in a 1/2 open pvp world. Punishment systems for murderers and what not. Most of these seem to include flagging, loss of stats, and other un-realistic things. I understand the idea that- "if they are strong enough to kill people left and right, they can stand to loose some stats to level the playing field." But to me, that seems lame.

Why not make it the opposite way, they slowly gain stats, just the same as everyone else would, but somehow in whatever game it may be, their name is thrown out into the world on some bounty list, the more they kill, they higher their name rises, the more bounty and xp the bounty hunter would get off that greifers death?

To me, that would be an in game event all in itself. People would build guilds around being killers, and killing killers alone, any in game politics thrown aside. Imagine it like the different little guilds and collectives on elder scrolls. You log in, go to your guild house, check the list and last know whereabouts, and start tracking that fool. (bring back up if need be)

All too often the anti pvp people play the victim in these opt-out open pvp games, and why? Take control of your virtual world, or buy your self a warrant for some greifers!

That type of system has been introduced in a handful of MMOs. People did enjoy it (not sure if they will still or not). The problem w/ such a system is that bounties are largely economic driven, so they still favor those with too much time on their hands. A bounty could encourage players to 'deal' with gankers, but it can also be abused to encourage players to target innocents, because a rich guy wants to be a dick.

It's best effected when implemented in conjunction w/ an outlaw system, in which the ganker is pronounced KOS to town NPCs.

However, as most new MMOs seem to be going with a faction setup, the best way to deal with gankers is a combination of the following:

- Faction based bounty list (puts a price out on players heads in enemy lands of a lower rank. A possibility would be to deduct a %age of the enemy's coin, when successfully killed in your lowbie zones)

- Enough guards to properly fortify your lands. One of the problems with many MMOs atm is that guards are almost purely cosmetic in their placement. Not many areas have guards that you can't sneak / run passed. Guards could also react to status effects on nearby allies (if you're DoTed by an enemy, they charge after that enemy). There also need to be enough patrols around to make hunting in lowbie areas difficult. Guards need to be of an appropriate lvl. (max lvl of the next highest tier or 2)

- Focused enough PvP zones so that ganking isn't the only means to have enjoyable combat. Preferably capturable objectives that can be fought over, that grant either bonuses, items, unlocks or any combination of the 3.

- Instanced PvP (not my favorite solution, but it is an 'easy fix'.)

I would probably enjoy world PVP in games like WOW if it wasn't so devastatingly uneven.

98% of world PVP situations where one player is 10+ levels above the other guy.  It's not player versus player at that point: it's "press '1' to insta-gib your target".

One solution is COX-style auto-level-balancing:  a level 80 attacking a level 40 only does the damage he'd have done at level 40 (plus a fraction of his gear.)

Gankers would still have the advantage (after all, they're going to catch you when you're at 50% health while you're fighting mobs,) but the overall fairness of world PVP ganking would skyrocket.

Player-set bounties are definately a bad idea, because it encourages having other grief for you. Take EVE for example, the only use of the bounty system is for rich people to show off (put bounties on themselves from other chars). If you set a bounty on a "pirate" or whatever, you're basically handing them your ISK. Had plenty of times where i had a corp mate kill me in a cheap ship to collect the 100mil+ on my head.

the idea was not to be "player set bounties", but more or less, you are flagged by the game mechanics, and not by a player, like a leader board, that a bounty hunter guild could see, perhapse even with a listed locality of where the murderer would be likely to be found.

I do agree, the placed bounty system is abused by the overly wealthy in games, but why not a mix where once a murderer has been flagged for open killing, money could be added into the bounty to expidite the process of people wanting to get out there and hunt this person down?