I'm a PVP fan. I'm not the greatest PVP'er, but I prefer the fluidity of the encounter that is a PVP fight versus the scripted encounters in PVE any day. Many other people like PVP in their MMO of choice too, and there are different kinds of PVP to think about when talking about MMO's. Small scale PVP is when the numbers of players fighting are (usually) less than 40. We see alot of this in MMO's, where we have 20 vs 20, 15 vs 15 and 10 vs 10 fights. Some games go even smaller, like 5v5, 3v3 and even 2v2. These small scale fights have different names across various games; battlegrounds, scenarios, arenas, etc. Large scale PVP is a different animal, and by all the evidence I've seen is very problematic to support in MMO's.

The first thing that comes to mind (via recent memory) is Warhammer Online. Their large scale PVP (RVR) is what the game's core is all about. Gather up a group or two (or three, or four) warbands and go to storm the castle. The other side does the same, and what results is a massive battle out in the open land. Its truly a sight to see. Hundreds of players battling, spells flying, bombs exploding, swords clashing, all the sounds of war can make it a wonderful experience. This has given Warhammer Online tremendous popularity in the mmo pvp circuit, and gave birth to Lake Wintergrasp in WoW's latest expansion. Players like this kind of content in their games by all indications.

Supporting large scale PVP has a slew of problems however. If you don't regulate how many players can be in the same area at the same time (especially in a game which focuses on this style of play) you will definitely have massive battles. Players will flock to the places where the action is taking place. Along with that, massive strain on servers will happen, which will inevitably result in a crash. I don't care who you are, the technology and infrastructure is just not out there to support 400-600 players in a large scale battle with any kind of regular success. The servers lag and eventually crash, and the average gamer's PC will just turn into a bad slideshow trying to render all those different avatars and spell effects.

The end result is that Warhammer will have to change their large city seige battles to take place in instanced zones that only allow a certain amount of players. I don't see how they really have any other option, as they must give their customers an enjoyable PVP experience by keeping the servers performing well under the strain. Warhammer has been wrestling with this for a few months now, and World of Warcraft has its issues with Lake Wintergrasp's large scale PVP too, as evidenced by this picture that many people saw last night due to Lake Wintergrasp causing the Northrend zones to crash repeatedly:



With all that said, I came to understand that I enjoy small scale PVP more than the large scale stuff. My preference for small scale battles has indeed been shaped by the poor client/server performance I've experienced in large scale battles, but I do enjoy the strategy that can come out of the smaller stuff. While I do think that Mythic and Blizzard will come up with solutions to fix the problems that plague their large scale PVP content, I'll be sticking with the small scale stuff for now.

Which do you enjoy more, and why? Inquiring minds want to know...