i13 pretty much ruined PVP permanently in this game.
i12 Test Ladder had become one of the most active points in competitive PVP in the game, with several more teams ready to join the fray right before the update. Castle made VERY VERY clear that i13 was not made with the PVP community in mind, and the pvp community in turn cancelled subscriptions en masse, some moving on to other games and others simply disappearing. The most saddening part about the whole mess was that i13 was promised to be the first step in a sweeping change to PVP for the best, but nothing major happened after i13. PVP was wholly ignored after the initial bridge burning. There have been glimmers of hope since, the FPVPL Season 1 being the best example of this. There has not been a competitive league or ladder since (I do not count the last league with WARE in which the winner was decided before the season started).
That being said, I will make this perfectly clear: If the devs ever created a test server like environment with a ruleset similar to where we were in i12, dozens and dozens of "old school" pvpers would return. To put it plainly, no other game has managed to capture the enjoyment of CoH's PVP engine in its prime: its requirement for absolute skill and coordination and its 3D combat which allowed for so much invention and creativity.
I hold no hope that a game in this stage of its development cycle would suddenly have a reversion as extreme as what I envision, but it is nice to pretend it could happen.
-Sneaks
