Why does EQ PvP suck compared to games that were designed with pvp in mind? Are you referring to class balance issues?
The classes in EQ were clearly never intended to be balanced, even in PvE. You don't see untwinked warriors and rogues running around soloing pve content, right? It's the same thing for pvp. EQ set out to be a group-oriented game, and this shows quite clearly in both pve and pvp. It's great!
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
And if you're referring to the fact that EQ PvP has no clear-cut reward system, you're
so far from "getting it." EQ is the perfect pvp game, and it's
because it was designed with pve in mind. It's all about player interaction, and with the simple idea of a persistent world (no instancing), we're given incentive to pvp. Because the content is limited, and we need access to that content to progress our characters, we have all the reason in the world to kill each other.
All the MMOs I've played that were designed with pvp in mind were pretty terrible in the pvp department. Games like WoW and Aion were so disappointing (even though Aion had the best fashion in any game ever and OMG ANGEL WINGSS!!). They took pvp and added all these hard-coded rules and limitations to it, even going so far as to cut off your communication with half of the people you're playing with. Then they tried to force meaning into the pvp by adding rewards for doing well, and add instances that try really hard to make MMO PvP into a FPS experience.
"Kill x many bad guys, or win x many capture the flag (????) matches, and show proof of this to Warlord Whoever for a nice shiny thing."
It all feels so synthetic. Don't you feel it in pve, too? In those games, there's really only one way to play. Every WoW server is exactly the same as every other, even the RP and PvP servers. Casual guilds are given x content, hardcore guilds are given y content. The number of players in a raid is dictated, there is no competition because everything is instanced.
I play EQ for the social interactions, and because of this I like that it's something of a sandbox game. We're not forced into playing as anyone has decided we should. This really shows in the pvp servers, which were all vastly different from one another on live. And I don't mean the rulesets, I mean the way the communities behaved. Even VZ and TZ, which had the same exact rules as decided by Verant (once VZ lost item loot) were vastly different. Guild politics govern the PvP servers, and it's all stuff we ourselves make up as we go along. We help to shape it and it impacts us all greatly.
And we decide who we want to be on these servers. We can be an evil menace, feared by all. Or a true white knight, protector of the weak and savior of the noobs. Or something in between hehe. I even successfully roleplayed a pacifist on VZ.
This thread should probably be moved lol.