Hm, somehow true. Although I'd like to state this more precisely:
PvP has been introduced during the Beta already; in form of:
* an arena (near Yrkanis), while more of those have been announced (we expected similar arenas to pop up in every country)
* duel-invitations and also team-duels called "PvP challenge" that would transport your team to a secluded instance in the desert where you could fight it all out, making every defeated character return, until the last character standing and left in the instance was declared to be the winner
During a media conference 2004 Davon Cohen Corval envisioned that after release there will "fun-PvP" (duels and events) in Ryzom, linked with money-bets placed with NPCs (!), and perhaps also possibilities to fight duels across servers to reward a single "Atys-wide best fighter".
At that same time DCC said that there will also be guild-PvP for outposts later on. Tribes would be the original owner of outposts and they would be the ones to give outposts to guilds (either fighting for it or trading/questing for it) for a certain period of time.
During the first Q&A-session in September 2004 the devs from Nevrax made very clear that PvP between guilds (connected to outposts) and faction-PvP will be introduced for sure.
Still: during all this time everyone from Nevrax has always stressed that PvP will only be "optional" and consensual with other alternatives to receive outposts and with possibilities to avoid PvP.
For patch "chapter 2" we were told in November 2004 by Nevrax at first that new (!) regions would be introduced offering different kinds of PvP - for factions, for guilds and also everyone against everyone, also during events.
But two regions were then made into "PvP-free-for-all"-zones by patch 2 part 2 in December 2004: the already existing lands of Umbra (not team-PvP at that time) and the Nexus (aimed at guild-PvP back then). This patch was not welcomed at all by many players (some had protested against it beforehand too), because this greatly affected popular regions for diggers and the PvP there was "non-consensual". A lot of players left bit by bit afterwards, feeling griefed by "fun"-ganking in the roots.
Later on during the so-called temple-wars-events ("episode 2" in October 2005) the temporary accessible "old lands"-regions with temple-ressources (Aelius Dunes, Olkern Lake, Almati Wood) were introduced as fixed "forced" faction-PvP-zones too. No PvP-tags existed back then of course.
The ignorance of the devs towards the many players who have again objected to the non-consensual PvP with polls beforehand, the digger-killing that went on in these regions after the event started, the boredom of those who could only avoid PvP by staying away from the new content, but also the increasing mocking, griefing plus other OOC-misbehaviour all over the game and even in the forums fuelled at that time made many players leave Ryzom.
In December 2005 outpost-PvP was first introduced with a patch, in a simpler version than we have it today of course. At that time nobody was particularly surprised anymore that this new content once again came without a non-PvP-alternative opposed to all of Nevrax's promises ever since 2003/2004...
However some players still were sad about this (after having raised fame with tribes for a long time in expectation of trading for outposts) and in time they too vanished from Atys forever. Also outpost-PvP ensured that the half-OOC-half-RP-bickering amongst the ever-shrinking community on all servers did not stop for a long, long time :(
PvP has been introduced during the Beta already; in form of:
* an arena (near Yrkanis), while more of those have been announced (we expected similar arenas to pop up in every country)
* duel-invitations and also team-duels called "PvP challenge" that would transport your team to a secluded instance in the desert where you could fight it all out, making every defeated character return, until the last character standing and left in the instance was declared to be the winner
During a media conference 2004 Davon Cohen Corval envisioned that after release there will "fun-PvP" (duels and events) in Ryzom, linked with money-bets placed with NPCs (!), and perhaps also possibilities to fight duels across servers to reward a single "Atys-wide best fighter".
At that same time DCC said that there will also be guild-PvP for outposts later on. Tribes would be the original owner of outposts and they would be the ones to give outposts to guilds (either fighting for it or trading/questing for it) for a certain period of time.
During the first Q&A-session in September 2004 the devs from Nevrax made very clear that PvP between guilds (connected to outposts) and faction-PvP will be introduced for sure.
Still: during all this time everyone from Nevrax has always stressed that PvP will only be "optional" and consensual with other alternatives to receive outposts and with possibilities to avoid PvP.
For patch "chapter 2" we were told in November 2004 by Nevrax at first that new (!) regions would be introduced offering different kinds of PvP - for factions, for guilds and also everyone against everyone, also during events.
But two regions were then made into "PvP-free-for-all"-zones by patch 2 part 2 in December 2004: the already existing lands of Umbra (not team-PvP at that time) and the Nexus (aimed at guild-PvP back then). This patch was not welcomed at all by many players (some had protested against it beforehand too), because this greatly affected popular regions for diggers and the PvP there was "non-consensual". A lot of players left bit by bit afterwards, feeling griefed by "fun"-ganking in the roots.
Later on during the so-called temple-wars-events ("episode 2" in October 2005) the temporary accessible "old lands"-regions with temple-ressources (Aelius Dunes, Olkern Lake, Almati Wood) were introduced as fixed "forced" faction-PvP-zones too. No PvP-tags existed back then of course.
The ignorance of the devs towards the many players who have again objected to the non-consensual PvP with polls beforehand, the digger-killing that went on in these regions after the event started, the boredom of those who could only avoid PvP by staying away from the new content, but also the increasing mocking, griefing plus other OOC-misbehaviour all over the game and even in the forums fuelled at that time made many players leave Ryzom.
In December 2005 outpost-PvP was first introduced with a patch, in a simpler version than we have it today of course. At that time nobody was particularly surprised anymore that this new content once again came without a non-PvP-alternative opposed to all of Nevrax's promises ever since 2003/2004...
However some players still were sad about this (after having raised fame with tribes for a long time in expectation of trading for outposts) and in time they too vanished from Atys forever. Also outpost-PvP ensured that the half-OOC-half-RP-bickering amongst the ever-shrinking community on all servers did not stop for a long, long time :(
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