From reading some of the previous posts, it seems that alot of players reading this board (and maybe the developers? Hrrm, not sure.) do not know what the difference between \"Pking\" and \"PvP\" is. The term \"PK\" came about in UO when there was unrestricted PvP+ tags on all characters, such that anyone could be killed by anyone else. It was often seen as something \"bad\" to do, because in UO your status is/was determined by the items that you had and all the items that you had were left on your corpse when you died. So that \"PKers\" could kill someone, take thier goods. The victim\'s items were lost, and the \"PK\" got the nice items with zero work put into it at the expense of the player that they killed. Hence, Player Killer. Hence the negative connotation. Hence the success of games that disallowed pking, namely EQ.
PvP on the other hand is Player versus Player Combat. This is differnet than \"PvM\" (player versus monster/mob) in a sense that your opponents are constrained by the same rules as you, span all levels of the intelligence bracket (with no AI), and you can communitcate with them. PvP is consensual, like the duels considered before: both parties must be willing to fight, or at least be willing to accept the consequences of thier death to another player. These systems are usually governed by some type of switch to allow you to fight other players.
From a personal experience, some of my best online moments have been in PvP situations where the challenge is not only comparing the statistics and abilities of my developed characters, but my intelligence of the game system and the familiarness to my character in situations where all of those are needed to overcome real-time, real-intelligent, player controlled opponents. It gives you a better sense of accomplishment when you realize that you have beaten another player instead of a computer controlled AI drone. Then again, I was never one to play the computer chess games. =/
Just dropped in to post to try to clarify the differences and stereotypes.
