Why no more hardcore PvP MMOs?

[Lilly32]

I really miss the glory days of the first few years of Ultima Online. That game was basically the Wild West of gaming. Because of open world PvP and corpse looting it was always an adrenaline rush when ever you logged it in. I was going to say when you left guard protection inside towns but even towns werent safe because enemy guilds could kill you without guard retaliation. Pretty much every single player in that game was looking to scam you, kill you, loot you or hell even do all 3 at once.

People used programs like UO:Extreme to provide massive advantages which at the time was the only way to use in game macros and things like target self and last target. You could also set it up to allow you to loot houses through the walls. This was also very beginning of internet gaming so the game was still bottlenecked by your internet speed. Oh the joy of being a freshman in college and using a T3 line when the rest of the world was still using 56k modems. You could literally kill people before they knew what was coming. Having a speed advantage coupled with actual n00bs lead to massive slaughtering.

Most people started out as miners because it was the best way to raise Strength, which translated 1:1 for health. I would roam popular mining grounds and leave corpses in my wake. People would carry their house keys and recall runes to their houses on them when they hunted. I looted their keys and runes, ported to their houses, and cleaned them out. Also the person holding the key was the owner so they even lost the houses cause they had no way to get them back. At one point I had at least a dozen houses of varying sizes.

But now they have ruined PvP in every single game. There is no more penalty for dying. This has lead to it just being flat out boring because everything is just a zergfest. You die, rez, then rush back in and die again. There is no more adrenaline rush when running into fights because if you died you lost all your gear. If you died while flagged as a murderer you had to wait until your murder count decayed becuse if you rezed you ate a massive stat loss. PvP in Ultima Online literally was YOLO, all the time for every single fight. But thats all gone now. There is no more rush of killing 3 people at once and seeing that all of them had their house keys and recall runes on them. There is no more rush of being hunted by anti-PKs and trying to get away alive because dying meant macroing off a high kill count. What exactly do you even lose when you are killed in a BG? Not a damn thing, you lose nothing. Dying in WoW or any other MMO is 100% meaningless.

In current MMOs I have played even the people on PvP servers are pussies. In games like Rift or WoW players of enemy factions can often be found questing close to each other. As a PKer in UO I killed every single player I came across and I would camp you until you either logged or went and got help in which case now I camped two people. I would rob your house and take everything you had earned so far in the game. But all thats gone and I seriously hope someone makes another game like old school Ultima Online because MMOs are starting to get boring with no risk at all when it comes to PvP.

[Usagi Senshi]

In current MMOs I have played even the people on PvP servers are pussies. In games like Rift or WoW players of enemy factions can often be found questing close to each other. As a PKer in UO I killed every single player I came across and I would camp you until you either logged or went and got help in which case now I camped two people. I would rob your house and take everything you had earned so far in the game. But all thats gone and I seriously hope someone makes another game like old school Ultima Online because MMOs are starting to get boring with no risk at all when it comes to PvP.

Bygone era is bygone, just deal with it. It isn't coming back in any mainstream MMO ever again. People have grown up and don't like wasting their time with losing shit anymore. My cousin and I camped people in Diablo 2 for days at a time back in 2001 and we were no-life losers for doing so. I would kill someone we hated, loot his ears/etc, camp him for a few hours then go to sleep after my cousin took over. I would then wake up and repeat the cycle, lol. It was fucking dumb as hell to be honest and we were douchebags for doing that. One guy actually stayed there cursing us for 20+ hours straight with another account and even threatened to come to our house and beat us up. My cousin gave him the address and this fucking loser actually drove 80 miles to our house and we told him to fuck off and called the cops on him, lol.

No company wants that type of bad pr with upset gamers anymore and for good reason, the market has changed from 15 years ago.

[Keyboard Champion]

Holy crap, the MMO past looks like a hellish time. Good thing the industry has evolved past such nonsense.

Seems to me like the nostaligcs are mostly griefers who can't piss all over people in today's MMOs like they used to in the past.

[Deleted]

This was also very beginning of internet gaming so the game was still bottlenecked by your internet speed. Oh the joy of being a freshman in college and using a T3 line when the rest of the world was still using 56k modems. You could literally kill people before they knew what was coming. Having a speed advantage coupled with actual n00bs lead to massive slaughtering.

So a lot of your PvP experience was based on OWNING T3H n00bz with slow internet connection? No wonder it was fun "losing gear when you died" if you had an edge most people didn't even dream about.

People want to actually play a game and let off some steam. Starting up in a new game only to get camped and obliterated every 30 seconds and losing all gear in the process is the opposite of fun. It's fun for all the psychos who then quietly think to themselves in their dark room how awesome it was to make that guy go through the whole process again.

Like most things PvP is also only VERY fun when you're winning a lot which makes it clear you never lost a lot. If you ever really got corpse camped to a point where you would have to be logged out for a week or more you would understand how "free for all" open world PvP is NOT always fun.

[Xisa]

Because trying to play a game where overgeared people constantly kill you and take all your stuff as you level is bullshit.

You were the MMO Equivalent of ISIS. We're all glad you can't do that anymore. Games like that have no audience.

[Fencers]

These type of games are not as popular as less hardcore PVP focused games. Thus they tend to make less money.

Due to the high cost of producing AA and AAA MMOs currently, developers & publishers are more likely to support the creation of games which make the maximal degree of appeal.

[Graeham]

'Hardcore' PvP in certain older MMO's typically revolved around bullying other players and wasting their time by stealing their hard earned items. Given the habit of people typically playing MMO's for fun then it shouldn't be terribly difficult to understand why modern MMO's are much more forgiving and don't punish players who may already have a lot to deal with in the real world. It's a niche activity at best.

[RoninaThorstone]

Aren't there a bunch of these games coming out over the next few years?

In a panel about the future of MMOs, a lot of the major developers were creating open world, pvp focused games.

[Tyris Flare]

There will always be Eve.

[tiffy33]

Holy crap, the MMO past looks like a hellish time. Good thing the industry has evolved past such nonsense.

Seems to me like the nostaligcs are mostly griefers who can't piss all over people in today's MMOs like they used to in the past.

except games back then actually had karma and your reputation meant something. I also played UO and being a PKer was a rough life. People would hunt you down. The old saying Red is Dead was very very much true in UO unlike it is in WoW. If people saw a PKer appear on screen they stopped what they were doing and came after you. If it was inside a dungeon they would abandon whatever they were fighting and chase you down. There were anti-PK guilds that would roam the popular PK spots hunting you. They knew where your house was and would try and catch you AFK and kill you using meteor shower bug which hit people inside houses through walls. They would have people wear newbie clothes and carry a mining pick and lead you to an ambush cause you were thinking easy kill. But all of that was what made is so fun. Where is the excitement and danger in PvP now?

Also gear was very very different back then. People hear corpse looting and think "holy shit that sucks" but it wasnt really that bad. Ultima Online gear wasnt like WoW gear. You didnt spend months of raiding and doing arenas to get a set of gear. You spent maybe 30 mins porting to a house vendor that sold armor and weapons or getting a smith in town to craft it for you. Also corpse looting was very good for the economy because it meant a constant demand for crafted gear. That helped smiths stay in business which in turn kept the miners in business because they had to supply the ingots.

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So a lot of your PvP experience was based on OWNING T3H n00bz with slow internet connection? No wonder it was fun "losing gear when you died" if you had an edge most people didn't even dream about.

yea cause its so much different in WoW? instead of having an internet speed advantage now its a gear advantage with a long grind to get honor gear just to hopefully stand a chance in low ranked arena and then another long ass grind to get Arena gear.

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Because trying to play a game where overgeared people constantly kill you and take all your stuff as you level is bullshit.

You were the MMO Equivalent of ISIS. We're all glad you can't do that anymore. Games like that have no audience.

You have absolutely no clue what the hell you are talking about. First of all ultima online had no levels. Secondly there was no such thing as "overgeared" because pretty much every single person used crafted gear. So everyone was equally geared. How can people comment on stuff they know nothing about?

[apepi]

I think a good amount of the mmo pvp market is instead focusing on mobas instead.

[Delekii]

Because the vast majority people don't like to lose their shit.

[Iseeyou]

I think a good amount of the mmo pvp market is instead focusing on mobas instead.

Yeah true. MMO devs completly gave up against MOBA.

[NuLogic]

Because they don't have a big enough audience so no big company will risk that.

[DeadmanWalking]

There is Moba's, which are designed from the core to be pvp and the fact that MMO's require more work than a Moba and with that much needed resources you don't want to turn players who don't like PVP off to your game. Comic book shops these days survive by selling comic books, collectables and Magic/Pokemon cards, without the cards they woudln't have a store to sell comics in. You adapt or you die.

[Lilly32]

after reading some of these replies I guess its pretty easy to understand why MMOs are starting to suck. Companies are catering to the people that are ruining them. Like a poster above said when they divided up the game into Felucca and Trammel making it similar to PvP and non PvP servers it killed the game. The devs listened to the crying bads and because of their changes the game died. WoW is nothing more than a wellfare game that rewards lazy people (LFR) and even gives you stuff for free like baseline resilience.

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There is Moba's, which are designed from the core to be pvp

so can I loot people in them? PvP is not PvP unless there is risk. When people go to war there is risk. When I join a BG in WoW or play LoL there is absolutely ZERO risk. Whether I win or lose nothing is gained or loss. I didnt lose exp, gear, gold...nothing.

[ATZenith]

Lol @ these people saying the PvP market isn't big.

-Looks at Mobas

[RoninaThorstone]

Lol @ these people saying the PvP market isn't big.

-Looks at Mobas

I think that's what people are saying.

The MOBAs have cornered what would have been the MMO HC PvP community.

[ATZenith]

And I enjoy PvP in MMOS but dislike Mobas. It sucks for me because Mobas are coming the next WoW clones. Except like Dota and Lol clones

[Graeham]

except games back then actually had karma and your reputation meant something.

No it didn't. Cheaters, scammers and those with shady morals reigned supreme and typically formed gangs to ensure that nobody else could be as powerful as them. A few exceptions existed but one's reputation was pretty meaningless unless you were notorious.