Warhammer Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Dropping the PvE backdrop altogether has proven to be equally disastrous in some cases, a tragic tale Fury could tell quite well. True, the title’s demise could easily be attributed to any number of core gameplay considerations, but at the end of the day it’s equally possible that beyond the leaderboards, reward vendors and  transitory perks, a lore-driven framework is necessary as a means to drive continual conflict ever forward. After all, when the drums of war all sound the same there’s no way to distinguish one side of a conflict from the other. Consider for a moment how many seasons the NFL would survive if the decision was made to form one giant pool of players with teams being made up on the spot by a random generator as participants entered the stadium. Sure, fan favorites would naturally emerge, but the entire notion of professional football would lose its luster the moment you erase the concept of home town teams or team colors.

In many ways, EVE Online stands as a lone beacon in the PvP ocean – not only within the sci-fi genre, but across the MMO industry as a whole. Players may make an initial racial selection that dictates certain specifics in terms of which frigates you’ll first undock from your local station, but the longer you play the more those defining lines begin to blur. Eventually you have Amarr piloting Gallentine cruisers thanks to a skill system that allows players a high degree of control over their character’s destiny that no other current MMO can touch. As a result, this sandbox freedom is a key element in EVE’s continued success, and serves the function of providing a loose framework for player driven conflict to ultimately thrive.

But just dropping players into a sandbox and saying “have at it” is still no guarantee that players will flock to an MMO space simply to engage in some brilliant PvP. Quick fix PvP still reigns supreme on consoles and PCs for games notably lacking a monthly subscription, but once you attach a recurring fee there needs to be an overarching goal or set of objectives to keep players embroiled over a longer period. In the case of EVE, the elegant solution of allowing players to control the market, the means of production and eventually entire sectors of space insures that the central conflict will span several months if not years. Just take a gander at some of The Mittani’s excellent editorials on the subject if you require any proof in your PvP pudding.

2008 was to be the year when PvP would redefine the fantasy genre in meaningful ways thanks to the one-two punch of Age of Conan and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning brought to us by industry heavyweights Funcom and Mythic Entertainment respectively. Somewhere along the lines though, those expectations fell a bit short, proving once again that compelling PvP content alone simply isn’t enough to sustain high numbers over a longer period. Even at its peak, AoC’s instanced PvP maps saw little use due to a lack of incentives to draw players in; an interesting turn of events considering the overall success of the PvP preview weekend prior to the game’s official launch in which the smaller PvP maps were the only content available to players.

The war still rages in WAR, but not to the degree many had hoped back when the pre-launch hype machine was working double time. Again, many players point to a lack of depth to the PvE aspects of the game as a means to drive forward the PvP conflict as the silver bullet that’s grazed the side of Mythic’s latest MMO beast – not a fatal wound to be sure, but one that certainly left a scar where servers bursting at the seams due to high player populations once proudly stood.

Above are tales that the Ghost of PvP Past will no doubt retell countless times as the industry marches ever forward. Since my own particular brand of pondering centers on concepts best left to discussions with the Mechanized Construct of PvP Future, it’s time to turn our eyes towards what could very well be the new face of PvP in MMOs, looking specifically at some of the ways upcoming titles Earthrise, Global Agenda and Fallen Earth plan on storming the industry’s PvP beaches in 2009.