Playing VZ was literally the most fun I've ever had in a video game. EQ pvp was not at all balanced, which was fine really. It's not like classes are balanced in pve either, with warriors able to solo on par with shaman or whatever. But the pvp aspect of the game really heightened the community aspect, with certain players and alliances of guilds being KoS to others. When x guild was around you knew you had some allies in the zone to xp with or help you fight off others, and when y guild was around you knew you had to watch your back. As you got to higher levels and it came time to choose a guild, you were really deciding what role you wanted to play in the intricate scene of server politics. I've heard this happened on RZ too, with the whole PK vs anti-PK thing.
It created incentive to RP, and I can't even imagine how dull RP would have been on blue servers. When I play blue99 the game feels very watered down from what I remember back on VZ. On blue it doesn't really matter who you interact with, as you have no enemies or allies to assist you against said enemies. I really miss the days of /guidstating every new player to enter a zone to try to figure out if they were friendly or not. PvP really makes you more interested in the in-game community and other players you meet. On blue you're so limited in the ways you interact with other players that it makes most of the people you run across largely irrelevant.
I'll never understand why bluebies largely don't want to play on red, and it makes me kinda sad to think that most people who have nostalgic feelings about this game never got to fully realize the community aspects that we pvp players did.
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