World PvP on paper sounds like some marriage between Mythic’s RvR and World of Warcraft’s Alterac Valley. It is supposed to be three or more servers fighting against one another for some amount of time (a week, two weeks, etc.) then the servers would gain new opposition. Three is the magic number, eh, Syncaine? Anyway the system goes far beyond the capture system found in Warhammer Online by adding RTS elements to the mix similar to what Alterac Valley has. The article says:

The World PvP Maps bear a resemblance to RTS-maps and give you a chance to play different roles. You can conquer stone mines, which will then deliver stone by caravan to your catapults, you can attack and cut off caravans of the enemy, you can operate as a scout and inform the rest of hostile movement, you can man watchtowers and defend, or you can just run up to a lost PvP’er and teach him a lesson. All these actions will earn you experience.

This is going to be an interesting, very complex system, and not without possible pitfalls. Alterac Valley is persistent in a sense, but it has a player cap. World PvP has no player cap, and numbers of 300 v. 200 have been flung around by ArenaNet. The need for warm bodies can definitely become a problem. Intricate systems designed to be full of players are usually a lot of fun, but when the population fizzles either to go to sleep or go play Diablo III then the complexity is really put to the test. Then there is the zerg issue where large numbers of players simply smash through any balanced complexity. A complex Ouroboros fight of hitting mines, supply lines, watchtowers, then keeps is still a boring prospect. On top of that there is inefficient PUG communication, griefing possibilities, and balancing to consider.

I have high hopes for this type of gameplay where we become the little RTS minions, only in an MMO instead of an FPS. There are a lot of pitfalls, and I hope that ArenaNet jumps across them with Atari-like ease. Guild Wars 2 World PvP will already have a leg up over the other RvR-esque competition because it will lack a subscription cost-of-entry.

–Ravious
make the other bastard die for his