I think it would work fine in camelot if they would set it up that way. people would still do the quests and the epic encounters and master level trials to make those level 50’s stronger, but much of the grunt work would be eliminated.
High-end RvR in Camelot has, to some degree, devolved from army-on-army fights with keep sieges and a grandiose capture-the-flag relic system to what could best be described as Counter-Strike with lots of buttons on a decent sized map. Since the endgame character progression in Camelot is just RPs, people have pretty much found that the best way to gain those RPs in the least amount of time is by running hyperoptimized groups of powergamers around the same zone, with the intent of either A) killing another hyperoptimized group of powergamers or preferably B) killing a hastily thrown together group or two that gives the same RPs as A), without the challenge of fighting A).
Every once and a while you see large armies go out and take keeps and try to take relics, but for the most part the hassle of leading something like that, the annoyance of dealing with people going linkdead all the time, not having the same runspeed as your group, etc, take its toll and you just go to the zone in the game that the players have turned into the aforementioned CSlevel and farm more realm points.
Mythic knows this, and is trying to change RvR with their next free expansion because of this. The current endgame RvR system is very casual-gamer unfriendly.
Battleground RvR is has the unique feature of having characters running around in less than optimal gear, something that is not often seen in endgame RvR. This makes classes like casters and archers more viable in these arenas than in the endgame.
Trials of Atlantis is a trainwreck that is just starting to get back in order. I have completed all nine of the Master Level trials on my cleric on Bedevere (though we have not yet started the tenth hidden trial yet), leading quite a few raids. Many trials were buggy, and many, many more were very hard to do even with 30+ people, which means getting your raid adverstised to the respective alliances and dealing with all the frustrations of herding cats for hours and hours on end. The customer support has been uniformally atrocious, making dealing with the bugged encounters even more frustrating.
Many, many, many of the master abilities and items/artifacts (items that come with their own leveling grind) are insanely overpowered and have widened the gap between the casual player and the powergamer much more than they should. Mythic is finally addressing this some, to their credit, almost six months after release.
There are a horde of other issues with the RvR endgame that play to the powergamers as well-“buffbots” (unkillable characters run on separate machines that provide high-level buffs to the owner’s main character and thier friends), a almost totally broken realm ability system, class and realm imbalances (though they are working on this and have come a long way in the last year), etc.
Even with all of that said, Camelot is still the only MMORPG with a endgame with a solid PvP structure that isn’t some obnoxious PK gankfest. It’s got its problems, but right now it’s the best PvP implementation out there, IMO, and until something better comes down the pipe I’ll stick with it. :)
If you include all MMOs Planetside has the PvP in Camelot beat easily. It still needs some balance tweaks but it is extremely balanced now. The stealth system actually works and has reasonable counters. I can’t think of an uncounterable weapon/vehicle/etc. in PS.
– Xaroc
I don’t think you can really compare what is in effect a MMO shooter with an MMO RPG. PlanetSide and Camelot have some similarities but ultimately they’re entirely different beasts.
Now, if you took the fantasy setting and gave it the PS treatment–sort of what was suggested above with everyone starting at level 50 for RvR–then you might be on to something. But PS is a much simpler game (to its credit) than DAoC. One of the reason for all the imbalances is the sheer number of classes, races, equipment, and ability combinations in DAoC, something PS really doesn’t suffer from. OTOH, there’s fairly limited variability in PS, but then again, too, what variation there is between players, sides, and equipment tends to matter more precisely because it is more limited.
I have to agree, I took a year off from DAoC and tried out all the new shiny MMOG’s that came out, but I ended up coming back. I hadn’t done that with anything but UO. Hopefully, Frontiers will bring a much needed refresher to RvR.
Although I have to admit, when I get frustrated I do go to Planetside and blow off some steam. I mean I can’t really blow off steam with an Ice Wiz solo in the frontiers. :P