We don’t talk about PvM vs. PvE all that much in the MMORPG genre, but we should. Maybe we like a PvE vs. PvP dichotomy too much. It’s easy, and so we smoosh PvE and PvM together and call it PvE, when what we really want to say is PvP vs. not-PvP.
But there really is a big difference between player-vs.-environment gameplay and player-vs.-monster gameplay. For example, I would call Lord of the Rings Online a heavily PvM MMO. Most of the friction in the game comes from mobs and enemies.
Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, seems more PvE than PvM to me. Oh, sure, there are lots of mobs to fight. Maybe too many. But in GW2, I frequently feel as if I’m playing against the gameworld, that the scale I’m playing on is more like map scale than monster scale – it really is me against the whole environment. And that’s baked into the game thanks to the way mounts are practically minigames, the maps corral objectives, and the environment itself shifts as players work together. Besides, what is a jumping puzzle if not you-vs.-the-world?
That’s not to say either is better; I think they work best together. Which MMORPGs would you say are more about PvE than PvM?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
