Originally Posted by
Raeshlavik
I guess that first of all I should point out that I'm 'old'... The "back in my day we use to carve CPUs out of wood" kind of old, and I've played just about every MMO out there at this point. This includes the "hardcore" PvP games such as Ultima Online, EverQuest (PvP Server), Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, World of Warcraft, etc. and I'm also quite good at PvP. Some examples?
My main in Shadowbane, a human confessor named "Malius", created an empire from the money I made as a mercenary thatguilds would hire to win territory for them. (note I didn't say 'Ireki assassin/mage')
My main in WoW, a Forsaken Priest named "Pane"from Darkspear, became so well known by the Alliance that they'd form "Pane Hunting Parties" whenever I was spotted in a zone and I'd be forced to kill between 4 and 6 players simultaneously. (note I didn't say 'Forsaken rogue')
So what I have to say isn't from the point of view of either a non-PvP or bad-PvP player...
A) You cannot "add" PvP to a game that wasn't designed for it.
The combat system has to be designed from the ground up to faciltate player controlled combat: It's faster, requires tight positional updates between clients, lag sensitive, and is really - really - hard to balance. You can have your choice of 'Dynamic world and playing experience' or 'PvP', but not both. (as Blizzard is finding out)
B) A rogue class cannot be balanced for PvP as it's all about the player's skill and mindset...
You get lousy players and the class becomes god-like for a few good players. Get really good players and an average player gets thierglutes on a plate every combat.
C) Rogues exist so that a given game will appeal to a specific demographic:
The narcissistic loaner twitch FPSer who could give a rat's patootie about nerdy things such as 'backstory', 'role playing', or 'quests'... For them it's all about DPS, stats, clever hot keys to shave that .01 seconds off a special attack, and feeling superior becausethey can kill anyone who is engaged in exploring that 'backstory', 'role playing', or 'questing'.
D) Stealth is golden and no skill/weapon/spell combination will ever equate to the simple fact of a rogue getting the ultimate choice of when and where. It's this choice that makes the rogue class the ultimate griefing tool in a PvP based MMO...
An example: A player is just about to kill the named MOB it needs for a quest, a MOB that spawns rarely and in random locations to make the quest difficult. But before they can finish it off and get the trigger for the quest, a rogue comes out of nowhere when they are already damaged, busy, and no threat,and kills them. This sets the questing player back -hours- usually to give the rogue player 30 seconds of 'fun'.
The effects of all of this aresome of the reasons I no longer play WoW... After becoming a 'bragging right' target on Darkspear and not being able to set foot outside of Horde lands without being attacked, I started over on 'Twisting Nether'... One month after the server started 24% of the population was rogue (48% of the rogues were Forsaken)... So roughly one in four of the 6000 players on that server were liable to screw up your game experience, at any time,in the name of their own fun.
Yeah. I wanna play there...
Anyways, I could be wrong on all of this, but I also study MMOs objectively and this is what I've found to be true. YMMV.