DAOC did this effectively with the zerg (you could leave without severely hamstringing your group – you could also rejoin with a minimum of waiting).

WOW did this with BGs (but broke this for all other end game content).

2. Balance. Your system needs to self balance the play given the numbers that are currently playing. In my mind, this isn’t ideally done as WOW did it (BGs of a limited number of players) but closer to DAOC – the side with the fewest players plays defense, and defense should be easier than offense. Perhaps toss some NPCs into the mix to keep things interesting.

3. Control. I should be in control of my PvP experience. If I want to PvP, it is there. If I don’t, I can get away from it. Once again see DAOC and WOW.

4. Equitability. Cannot be overstated. WOW broke this very badly – PvPing with raid level gear was a cruise control win against those without. If you are trying to get new players to PvP, a good introduction is not to tell them they have no shot until they have amassed items X, Y, & Z.

Other than that, I agree with the points in the main article. PvP SHOULD feel like you are playing against very intelligent NPCs.

Mr. Jennings at Broken Toys, and Mr. Green of Psychochild’s blog have both penned recent blog entries reflecting on PvP playstyles, offering some evolving insight on what seems to work, what doesn’t, and go into a bit of brainstorming on w…

An average person, with some training, can do about 2 full-scale conversations at once.

An exceptional person can manage 4 communication channels at once, tracking everything that’s happening on them.

Considering the speed of most people for type vs voice, even 2 channels provides far more data than trying to watch (and type) your conversations.

Both were dropped by their publishers early on because of lack of revenue!!

It’s not just people who lose outright at persistent-world pvp who quit; people who win outright tend to quit as well, because the game gets too goddam boring. That’s why I left shadowbane, the game just got old when we were curbstomping everyone with no opposition.

Eve’s solution to this — and the place they went right where Shadowbane failed — was to simply make the world so big that it was effectively impossible for any one group to completely control it. Anyone who lost could always travel to another region of the galaxy and rebuild. The “lowsec” areas — areas where pvp is allowed, but the space isnt’ conquerable, and everyone can dock at the NPC stations — help with this, as it gives alliances kicked out of 0.0 an area they can’t get kicked out of but can still make some cash.

That said, yeah, it’s true that people who lose at persistent-world-pvp mmo’s like shadowbane or eve tend to quit. But the upside is that people who are interested in that kind of high-risk PVP will play your game in preference to a low-risk-pvp game like WoW. So if you’re developing a game in a market that has to compete with WoW, catering to a niche market that WoW doesn’t cater to can be a smart business strategy. Which is part of why Eve has continued to grow as much as it has .It’s a niche market game, but in a market dominated by 1000 pound gorillas, offering something different and unique can be a smart move.