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I am probably going to anger some people with this editorial, seeing as Player vs. Player (PvP) tends to get the blood flowing in most people. If you agree with what I end up saying, more power to you. If you end up disagreeing with what I say, more power to you and its nice to know there are variances of opinions out there.

The problem with PvP is that these battles are taking place in an online world. People tend to think that because they are in an online world, they no longer need to act like adults. The original developers of massively multiplayer online role-playing games never accounted for this. Of course, neither would I had I been in their position. I too would have assumed that grown ups would act like grown ups. Raph ‘Designer Dragon’ Koster made it plenty apparent that a large number of people quit the early release of Ultima Online when player killing was rampant.

So let’s take a look at two games that serve as examples for this editorial, Ultima Online and EverQuest.

Ultima Online: The first MMORPG to hit the shelves and see wide-spread success. Problem was, even Origin had no idea how great of a success their game would become. Originally, the game was only programmed for a small amount of people to be playing at the same time. Ideally, with a small amount of people acting like adults, the reputation system in place would work. Unfortunately, thousands of people flocked to Ultima Online. Many of these adults, sprinkled in with a good number of children, found out they didn’t need to act mature within the game. The anonymity of the internet protected them from any retribution.

This anonymity kept them safe and allowed them to grief people. If only a few people had been playing brigands and murderers in the wilderness, then by all means the original reputation system in Ultima Online would have worked. The problem was that hundreds of people were playing murderers. It was so bad, that some people after their first five trips out of town didn’t leave town again for months. The only good thing that came from this was that it fostered strong community ties for defense. Yet these strong community ties were coming at the cost of hundreds, if not thousands of closed accounts.

I myself took part in the player killing. I originally started out as a good guy; finding the murderers and killing them. Yet it became painfully obvious to me as time dragged on that there was nothing profitable to being good. The murderers made ten times what I did. For every time they died, the easily re-armed. Every time I died, I had to spend an hour making enough gold to totally re-outfit myself. This was very taxing on my ability to fight. So I fell into the old saying of “if you can’t beat them, join them.” I became one of those fireball throwing murderers that permeated Despise and North Minoc. Eventually the number of players that visited the area me and my friends killed at began to dwindle substantially.

It became apparent; players didn’t want to be killed over and over. Players wanted to be able to adventure without fear of their fun being ruined. Ultima Online adapted, changing the game mechanics to allow players to be less hindered by other players. The early player base of around 100,000 has grown to around the mid 200,000s.

EverQuest: EverQuest was Sony Interactive Studios of America (SISA) first attempt into the MMORPG market. From the beginning it was considered a massive project and had a lot of buzz. It was rumored that the only reason Tanarus (small tank game) was made was to test the affect of zones with players in them. EverQuest tackled the problem of PvP quickly.

I had the pleasure of beta testing EverQuest very early in its creation. What was very odd was that many of the early beta testers were avid PvP’rs from Ultima Online. I don’t think many know it, but many of the early phases of EverQuest were filled by the likes of Sinister, Saecula Omnimodus Bellum, Coveteus Crew, The Pluggers, and the League of Pirates. We wanted to work on PvP so much they had to create another section on the private message board. It became apparent though as the beta progressed from their lack of replies on that board that the folks at EverQuest could really care less about the balancing of PvP combat.

There would be no PvP unless in specified arenas or by the acceptance of a duel command between two characters. As soon as word got about of how EverQuest wouldn’t let another player affect your game like they could in Ultima Online, the game began to pick up more steam than ever before.

The game launched with a few problems, but Sony didn’t force people to pay until some of the server problems were worked out. As time went by though, it became apparent that with the lack of opportunity for players to kill each other, many people became rude and intolerant of others. This was not near as much of a problem as the mass murdering in Ultima Online since the numbers of people just being down right rude with kill stealing and such was much smaller. It also wasn’t as much of a problem because people didn’t quit because a few people were rude to them earlier in the day.

The lack of PvP though seemed to cause the game to stagnate at the higher levels, making it nothing more than a level treadmill. Let’s be honest with ourselves, we don’t like running on the treadmill to make ourselves healthier, so why are we going to like tread milling for level upon level in a game? Evidently a lot of people did, because as of right now EverQuest has around 400,000 and some subscribers. The lack of having to deal with other players affecting your game-play was enough to keep EverQuest the game of choice among many people.

So now Blizzard is faced with a decision. Do they copy EverQuest’s success and just make the game horrible for a player vs. player war experience? Or do they try to improve upon what Ultima Online envisioned? Before I post my thoughts on how they could improve upon the PvP aspect of the game, I would like to see some discussion on the boards as to how other people feel about the issue.