[MUD-Dev] Summary of PvP attempts?

[Trump]

On Monday 11 June 2001 01:30 am, Brian Hook wrote:
> At 07:12 AM 6/11/01 +0000, --matt wrote:

>> You think that low? I bet if you just ins'otituted open PK on
>> Everquest as a whole, they would, within 20 months, lose more
>> than half their audience.

> Er, more like 80-90% I would guess, and probably within 6 months,
> since the vast majority of early EQ adopters went there because of
> the voluntary PvP participation.  And I would argue that a large
> amount of the more recent EQ players aren't even aware of what PvP
> is like (i.e. they're not necessarily displaced UO/AC players, but
> instead players that were brought in by their friends).

Interest in PvP in EQ suffers greatly from the system.  Anyone who
has played it realizes that a level 8 player has no chance at all
against a level 12 player.  None.  Even avid PvP/PK players choose
to go "carebear" because the system is so utterly broken.

Any game with a large amount of downtime where you are highly
vulnerable and huge leaps in player power through advancing in
levels is going to be very unpopular to the PvP crowd.  The use of
class/level systems in DaoC and SB met with quite a bit of anger
from the PvP community until it became apparent that the plan was
for everyone to be at the "level cap" after only a few days.

The 40% loss number is accurate in a game (such as UO) where the
combat system makes is so that players are usually on more or less
equal footing.  This 40% represents the percentage of people who are
so annoyed by being attacked when they are busy doing other things
that they would quit your game.

I'm sure there were many thousands of players who tried the EQ pvp
servers but quit when they were constantly killed by players who
were so much more powerful that they could not even fight back.

The popularity of games like Quake and even Starcraft attest that
players are certainly not disinterested in PvP where the sides are
equal and everyone is there to fight.  If WW2OL can get it's bugs
ironed out I'm sure it will be a huge success, even tho it's a total
PvP game.

-Azeraab at dies-irae.org
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev