Hey guys, so I just got the feeling like I wanted to have a discussion on something like this. While there are tons of MMOs currently on the market, I think most people agree that the "Big 4" of the MMORPG genre currently are WoW, FFXIV, GW2, and ESO. Now, of course all these games cater to different types of people, but one of the things that they all have in common is instanced PvP.
As somebody who just really enjoys playing PvP in an mmorpg, I figured this would be a fun topic to talk about. For the record, I am by no means the best PvPer; honestly probably mid-range at best, and haven't actually experienced PvP in FFXIV (the information I have about that game is from watching pvp guides on youtube and reading.)
So, to start off, we can look at WoW. World of Warcraft, essentially, has 3 different forms of PvP. Arenas, Battlegrounds, and War mode (open world pvp).
Arenas are considered to be the competitive form of pvp in Wow and function as a team deathmatch. Teams can be 2v2 or 3v3.
Battlegrounds can have anywhere from 10 players per team up to 40 players per team depending on the BG. While there is rated BGs, I would say that they are not seen to be as competitive as Arenas. The game mode differs between each map; some having capture the flag while others have capture the node.
Finally, there is War mode, which is a form of open world PvP where you specifically turn on war mode to fight in the open world. I feel like I don't have to explain the PvP modes as much here (duh) due to obvious reasons lol. I will go into more detail with the other games.
Next, in ESO, essentially there are 2 different forms of pvp. Battlegrounds and Cyrodill.
Starting off with Battlegrounds, there are different game modes depending on the map and each game is set at 4v4v4. Some of the game modes are Team Deathmatch, Capture the relic (basically capture the flag), and Domination (capture the node). Battlegrounds aren't very popular from what I have seen in ESO, and not really considered to be all that competitive.
Then, there is Cyrodill, which is a large, continuous, 3 faction battle. Essentially an Altiirc Valley on steroids, you have towers, keeps, supply lines, etc. Cyrodill is split into 2 different parts; the main map of Cyrodill, and the Imperial City at the center (which will soon become it's own "campaign"/instance in the upcoming expansion). The main objective is to capture the keeps/towers that surround the Imperial City so that your faction can crown an Emperor. Also capture enemy Elder Scrolls and take them back to your faction's HQ in Cyrodill. Essentially this is similar to open world pvp, however it has it's own dedicated map (which is rather large).
Moving on to FFXIV, there are essentially 3 different forms of pvp in the game; The Feast, Frontlines, and Rival Wings.
The Feast, from what I have gathered, is the competitive portion of pvp which focuses on small 4v4 or 8v8 arena team deathmatch.
The Frontlines are large scale tri-team arenas with up to 72 players total (so 24v24v24).
Finally, Rival Wings is a MOBA inspired pvp mode that includes things like mechs and turrets.
Finally, my personal favorite of the bunch, GW2. GW2 has two seperate pvp modes in the game; Structured PvP and World vs World.
Structured pvp has three different game modes; Conquest (which is capture the node), Stronghold (which is a MOBA inspired mode that uses npc "doorbreakers" and champions. First to kill enemy lord wins), and finally Arena team deathmatch.
Both conquest and stronghold are 5v5 with Conquest being the games competitive mode of pvp.
Arenas are 2v2 and are considered a side event. In fact, while you can access both Conquest mode and Stronghold mode through the structured PvP's interface for queues, Arenas (at this time) can only be accessed through the Custom Game browser.
Finally there is World vs World, which is extremely similar in style to ESO's Cyrodill. The major difference, however, is that the battle takes part in 5 different maps as opposed to 1 large map.
Anyway, that is a pretty fair (i think) overview of each of the 4 major MMO's pvp systems. What is your favorite, what do you wish Blizz would implement into WoW?
Also, bonus poll, who in your opinion has the best pvp system?