Not too long ago a lot of you may remember talking about MMO games and their respective endgames with only one thing in mind; Raids and PvE progression. Following the highly popular trend derived from classic MMO games such as Everquest, the mainstream games of today such as World of Warcraft quickly adopted this core design structure. That was in 2004, however. Today, in 2007, we are seeing a completely different trend arise inside the MMO gaming sphere.
Player versus Player combat, or PvP for short, is what made games such as Ultima Online or Dark Age of Camelot hugely popular in earlier years. Following EA's acquistition of Mythic Entertainment a while back, EA - as large as they may be, are now sporting 3 of the most renowned PvP MMO games in the world. Ultima Online's revamp "Kingdom Reborn" is sure to be re-vitalizing the interest in a game a lot of people thought dead and forgotten. The other two giants are none other than Dark Age of Camelot - the first RvR (Realm versus Realm) centric MMO to ship to a broader audience and Warhammer Online; Mythic's latest up-and-coming flagship title.
Other titles that have captured large amounts of the market are Asian developed Lineage 2 and American based Guildwars. As we are moving through 2007 it is becoming increasingly apparent that more and more developers are focusing on the dynamic gameplay that a PvP 'endgame' allows for. Even Blizzard Entertainment, responsible for the worlds most popular persistant world - World of Warcraft, are jumping on the bandwagon and even taking it one step further as you can see in this video interview I had with Paul Della Bitta, Senior Community Manager and Blizzard E-Sports figurehead.
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What is the cause of this?
If we are to believe the hardcore nuts of #Battlegroup9, Gamesurge, the reason is simply "PvE sucks". While I am certain that some people certainly don't enjoy the "static" design that is Player versus Environment (PvE) endgame, I think the roots of this trend lie deeper than just pop culture. If we again look back to the "glory days" of Everquest, one of the main driving and selling points of the raiding endgame was that there was real competition around the availability and achievement of defeating endgame bosses. In today's world, however, just about all of the endgame in any newer MMO is instanced - meaning that even if Guild A goes and kills the monster, it will still be available for defeat to Guild B who will enter the same zone in a different spawn instance.
Back in the day, as people so cleverly say, this was not an option. You had to bring your team to the monster when it spawned, often resulting in "races" of who could be the first to get to and defeat said encounter. Essentially, a winner takes all mentality. The strongest (and perhaps the least RL socially active) guilds would form routines around killing all the hardest monsters each week in order to collect the loot and claim 'intarweb superiority' over everyone else. With instances, this level of competition is gone; leaving a void zone desired by many gamers. For many, gaming is about being better than everyone else and having the resources to prove it.
Perhaps another reason also resides in the fact that the generation who were playing games such as Everquest religiously have grown up and are either already in or starting on their careers, marriages or what have you. A clear drawback of the raiding endgame is the time commitment required by a larger amount of people in order to accomplish anything noteworthy. PvP on the other hand, does not require the same amount of time commitment from the same amount of people. That is, at least not in the competitive MMOs of today.
The bottom line in this matter is that the developers and publishers for the most part will cater their games towards where the money in the market lies. With games such as Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, Fury, Age of Conan and Guild Wars 2 on the horizon, the stage is set for a very interesting and competitive battlefield, testing each players skill, dedication and their character's gear.
