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PVP isn't optional for COX's long term survival. The PVE is stale and most people in the anti pvp crowd turn to badge hunting just to keep themselves entertained. Most of the people I talked to had servers that went through a shock when the zone bugs effectively shut down pvp on most servers from november to february. Most people stopped logging in and serveral people quit, who are only now coming back. Since COX is a game of many alts, these people turned out to be a lot of toons people had known in other venues.
On one of the first four pages on this thread someone brought up that SWG had been pvp centric as it's end game and had then switched to pve for a bit. They incorrectly assumed that's what hurt that game. By contrast, in 2003, SWG had the biggest openning of any MMORPG which it lost by being eclipsed by WOW. It's numbers dropped overnight and half it's servers closed by becoming a grind game with Jedi and the CU. It numbers were harmed even worse by becoming even more PVE centric NGE. SWG had to suck up that PVP paid the bills to begin regrowing now.
While approaching 9 million paying subscribers, which is more than the Nelson rating of most tv shows, WOW has servers that are labeled PVE and Roleplaying, which have pvp zones and have pvp hot options. Eve Online, MXO, Guildwars, COX, Vanguard, and every other game have the pvp components. Warhammer, Age of Conan, Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, Star Trek Online, Marvel, DC, Firefly Online, and World of Darkness Online, are being pre built with PVP in mind and that's every major game being released from 2007-2009.
PVP pays the bills. PVE does not.
That's not me saying that. That's the entire video game industry saying that. They are saying that now. They are saying that through 2010 and quite possibly beyond.
In fact, PVE does the opposite of pay the bills. PVE only develops a core of players that burn through 3 month of development in a weekend. Does that make them happy? Not at all, they go on to cry on whatever forum board that another 3 months of development can't be done instantly to stop their boredom.
As much as the anti pvp crowd might stalk these forums and scream endlessly in the throws of obsessive compulsive disorder that they don't like pvp in this game. This game will have to have it and balance it to survive.
If the developers of this game ever get silly enough to listen to the screams of the anti pvp crowd, this game will have its life support plug pulled much sooner. Right now, without the balance issues being fixed, this game is expected to only edge out a suvivable profit by the time Marvel and DC come out. Paradoxically, NCSoft is developing Marvel and I'll bet real money it's being required to be absolutely balanced from the beginning.
PVP creates long time rivalries. PVP creates player driven content. PVP communities are the group that stay with a game for years in the highest numbers.
You might believe in your heart pvp doesn't pay the bills. But all the industrial side market research for the past two years says that you are saying the world is flat.
Here is your proof from just one major developer, watch all 7:26 minutes:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZOTRjWGxmjI
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