Why no more hardcore PvP MMOs?

[Vargur]

Everything in EVE is PVP.

I don't understand the metaphor, but it really isn't.

[PosPosPos]

It's so obvious: players realize that investing in an game that incentivises griefing each other results in being griefed themselves.

Sane individuals have this apparently surprising tendency to avoid pain and suffering - and the first step to achieve that is to avoid being put in a situation for that to happen.

[Tekkommo]

Not many people would play them.

[Soxoffender]

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.

True enough. If people knew who you were in UO it was typically because you were in a mob of arseholes who went around crushing solo players for sport. Those players didn't even have to be any good at the game (though many were). In modern MMO terms it was the equivalent of an organised WoW BG team picking on questing noobs.

[Yriel]

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.

And yet player numbers were dropping fast until they introduced Trammel, then they stabilized.
Hardcore PvP is a small number of players having fun on the expense of all others. That's just not feasible as a business model.