Has anyone had a chance to level up decently during the previous or current beta of Rift and gotten a sniff at the PvP in the game? I'm looking to move onto something from WoW and was hoping Rift could be my new home.
at lvl 20 i have only seen one instance. capture the flag (fang) theme. It gets mindlessly boring after a while. The classes are pretty imbalanced atm. The game runs pretty smooth in pvp and you can get exp while you are in there which is cool. Other than that though it got old for me pretty fast.
Warriors with just about any two soul combo's will run thru everything out there. I was playing a mage just cause i am stubborn and it was a diefest. When I rolled a warrior on this last event he was absurdly op'ed.
My advice would be to wait for a few weeks and do the 7 day trial. I am a hardcore pvp'er as well and bought the game for that reason. I don't see myself playing past the first month.
You want real hardcore pvp might I suggest Darkfall, DAOC, or Ultima Online.
I started playing Rifts for the first time tonight and im on the fence about it. It looks visually appealing and very polished and I like the soul system but its really really easy to me granted im only lvl 8 but it just seems like your going to be able to solo everything aside from the dungeons. Can anyone confirm this? I dont want a solofest game either and I want pvp to be meaningful not just battleground type crap. On top of that theres only 3 races per realm which I thought was lame.
On another note I cant stand the community in game so far, I clicked my combat tab to watch damage and later on in the night I clicked back to chat and the first word I read was pubes, and wow this and wow that. *bangs head off keyboard* ive about given up on this genre aside from a few choice games.
Has anyone had a chance to level up decently during the previous or current beta of Rift and gotten a sniff at the PvP in the game? I'm looking to move onto something from WoW and was hoping Rift could be my new home.
You need to define what you are looking for? As you mention WoW and "hardcore" - I'm going to guess your version is more about going to WoW-math sites and running your max-spec'd chars in arena combat vs. singles and groups of other like-minded players... with no risk involved, other than your statistical ranking.
I think others would describe "hardcore" as PvP without restrictions and risk to your character's progression and gear.
I'll describe my experiences with RIFT and you can decide how that fits for you.
WoW has PvP mini-games. Rift will have essentially these same mini-games - though more similar in style to WAR. The AV clone might function better, though apparently will be smaller in scope 20v20 vs. 40v40 (if I remember).
WoW has an arena. Rift has no arena.
WoW has no open-world PvP (really it doesn't, don't kid yourself). Rift is implementing various objectives and mechanisms (as I type) to encourage open-world PvP. Remains to be seen how fun they are... I'd check the forums for various evaluations.
There is a PvP death penalty in Rift in the open world - in the form of some coins for soul restoring. There is none in WoW.
Has anyone had a chance to level up decently during the previous or current beta of Rift and gotten a sniff at the PvP in the game? I'm looking to move onto something from WoW and was hoping Rift could be my new home.
You need to define what you are looking for? As you mention WoW and "hardcore" - I'm going to guess your version is more about going to WoW-math sites and running your max-spec'd chars in arena combat vs. singles and groups of other like-minded players... with no risk involved, other than your statistical ranking.
I think others would describe "hardcore" as PvP without restrictions and risk to your character's progression and gear.
I'll describe my experiences with RIFT and you can decide how that fits for you.
WoW has PvP mini-games. Rift will have essentially these same mini-games - though more similar in style to WAR. The AV clone might function better, though apparently will be smaller in scope 20v20 vs. 40v40 (if I remember).
WoW has an arena. Rift has no arena.
WoW has no open-world PvP (really it doesn't, don't kid yourself). Rift is implementing various objectives and mechanisms (as I type) to encourage open-world PvP. Remains to be seen how fun they are... I'd check the forums for various evaluations.
There is a PvP death penalty in Rift in the open world - in the form of some coins for soul restoring. There is none in WoW.
I wouldn't say that is a fair assumption. While WoW happens to be my game of choice, I choose it only for the reason that it is where my friends reside. We are both looking for something different as we are burned out with WoW. We do arena, both 2s and 3s, although we aren't top tier.
We most run in PUGs, the 2 or 3 of us, not in full pre-mades. We don't really care about rating or any of the such - we just wanna have fun and eventually get some nice looking gear for our work.
I'm kind of weary of open world PvP - it tends to be fun for the first few weeks and then dies out fairly quickly.
I spent several hours just pvping on both Defiants and Guardians. The defiants win about 75 pct of the runs on the cluster I am on. The classes are insanely unbalanced. The only pvp instance that I have seen under 19 is a keep the fang....first one to 500 wins. Once everyone figured out to take the fang to the very top by their spawn point it pretty much became first team to get the fang wins. At times the game stays in the middle and it is just a street fight. The tanks just bulldoze to the back and eat the casters up. With a few fully specced healers and a few tanks you can just decimate the guardians.
Sub 20 pvp is fun for about an hour then it just becomes frustrating. I do like the ability to mix and match soul trees and really customize your toon to your playstyle but that is a small plus compared to the horrible class balance and a really bad instance.
This is an interesting game but it is NOT a pvp game. War had much better instances and more balanced play than this does and i left that game after a few months. Again it is an interesting game but if I am going to just pve there are much better games out there.
Rift is a PvE game first and then a PvP game. So no it isn't really oriented on being a hard core pvp game. That said it does have open world pvp servers and various pvp instances like wow. But the balance is not sacraficing the pve game for pvp balance.
I don't know what you guys are talking about, I was playing a Warlock/Chloromancer/Necromancer and just my 4-5 dots ate the tanks by like 75%, I also have a 1.5 sec cast, instant nuke,stun,fear,slow,heal on damage etc it is fairly balanced, Warriors are just easier to learn than the other classes it is 1-2-3 finisher repeat. Once you truelly learn your mage you will destroy (so much CC, AoE and direct nukes), same for rogues sustained DPS with the 5 combo nuke, clerics ive never tried one so i couldnt say but i sure know healing>tank damage,
I have a feeling this game will be great for PvP but itll take at least a month of play with 1 class to get used to the whole soul system synergy learning curve etc.
About all of the Warhammer community that I know, is moving to Rift. I'd call that a PvP community for the most part. All of those I've talked to are so far happy with it. Everyone has there own opinion. Its like over half of the server I used to be on. Though Warhammer is a dying game and they need to go some place. Just pointing out they Picked Rift :shrug:
I spent all of Sunday pvping the two lvl 17's i had rolled. Here are several impressions:
The pvp did get better as I got a better unsderstanding of the class and my wacky build(as previous poster noted)
They give you 3 soul traits/options. They tell you which they think works best together. On several beta builds i went with their recommended builds. On the last toon I rolled I put what I wanted in a toon which worked much better. You can build a mage/healer if u want or a roque/marksman/bard. I enjoyed being able to work my build, as crazy as it was and make it work.
players that went up one tree early seemed to do better, delivering big doses of dmg fast.
the weapons you get from quests are not as good as what you can make with limited crafting skills. in about 20 min of crafting i had a weapon that was max for my toon. I would harvest the wood and ore while i was questing.
lving is insanely ez if you run around closing rifts.
one tree healers are impossible to kill alone in the teens.
Someone had posted about the community and I have NEVER seen a good beta community.
One run in an instance will give you about 10-20 pct of a lvl which i loved.
Some classes are much better than others in pvp. Certain builds just will not work as well in pvp as they do in pve. I am hoping they allow a 2 build system that you can change back and forth. that would allow each class to be more competetive in pvp instances.
at lvl 19 i did wander into the open pvp zone and found people there more than willing to take my cyber life. I kept a lvl 25 busy and almost had him.
defiants on the pod i was on won more often. prob about 60-70 pct.
pvp ques were much faster on the guardian side. most of them instant to under 5 min. Defiants were 5 min +.
the rifts have great graphics and it does feel nasty when you are in them.
If they can put out a few more quality instances the game could be better than wow pvp IFFF they make the pvp gear competetive to the raid gear. Wow always got off track with uber raid gear being so much better than pvp gear.
I plan on sticking around for a few months to see where they take this game. I was in the wow beta and i can say Rift is MUCH further along at the same point in every aspect, especially pvp. wOW did not even have a pvp instance at launch and when they did roll them out they were single server with 60 min wait times. As you can see by my posts above I am not a fanboi. I was kinda hard on the game but once I did my builds my way the game was a lot more fun.
I usually don't post in forums, I just read, but I thought I'd share my PvP experiences this last weekend.
Overall the warfronts are pretty good, and I had your typical "OMG team sucks" experience, and also tons of good up and down back and forth matches too. Those matches are really what you make them, I feel.
I wanted to talk about the open world PvP in Scarlet Gorge and Scarwood Reach. This is where I had a TON of fun. They designed these zones to be shared by both factions, and your quests chains end up running into each other in the middle - and the chaos is wonderful. I was going after a linear quest objective and got sidetracked by some Guardian jerk who tried to jump me. The whole thing escalated into a big open world battle for no real reason, but it was wonderful. Didn't actually get back to my quest until like 2 hours later.
And then they throw in world events that I've been a part of twice. And they went down totally differently. The first one was a complete failure - A large raid and then some of my Defiant comrades caught up to this giant elite mob with like half a million HP or something, and we started working away at it, and then this giant raid of Guardians shows up and all hell broke loose. Half of us went off to fight the Guardians, while the other half tried to finish the boss but ended up getting stomped because we lost the healers. It was a mess but tons of fun, because you just can't script those wtf moments. The second time was really WEIRD. Guardians and Defiants caught up to the boss at the same time... and nobody attacked each other. We pretty much worked TOGETHER to bring the boss down and succeed in the mission. It was AMAZING. I have no idea how that ended up happening but it was such a twist! We worked side by side and broke down the boss... and then we stood there staring at each other for a few seconds after the boss collapsed...
And then hell broke loose again.
I must say these kinds of stories are really what made PvP this weekend really fun for me, and I'm glad I rolled on a PvP server.
I sometimes find myself feeling like a spoiled brat. After playing pvp in GW I find all of these open world pvp and battlegrounds to be rather.....crappy. The imbalance and chance for a good match is very very low. You usually end up winning all by blow out(or close) or losing all by blowout(or close).
When there is no matchmaking ala fps or no level parity, things can get ugly really fast. Add to that the fact that gear is also a factor and in rift you have a ton of classes and pvp is pretty bad imo. I like more of the GW approach where they limit the amount of things that can influence a battle and let it run down to the basics. Skill, team work and strategy. This makes for way more interesting matches where you get more of a challenge. Still GW had one big drawback that I hope they fix for GW2, match making(I know GvG has it, but thats about it). FPS's have it, sports games have it, even RTS's have it!
Regarding open world pvp, I see were there is a lot of fun to be had. When the prize for it can be territory or "honor" currency for your faction and it dwelves more into the storyline. That I do like, but that I do not know if Rift has. I know they have battlegrounds, but I do not know how does their world pvp work or even if they have any. If you like meaninless pvp with lots of frustration, you will love the warfronts!
I wouldn't say that is a fair assumption. While WoW happens to be my game of choice, I choose it only for the reason that it is where my friends reside. We are both looking for something different as we are burned out with WoW. We do arena, both 2s and 3s, although we aren't top tier.
We most run in PUGs, the 2 or 3 of us, not in full pre-mades. We don't really care about rating or any of the such - we just wanna have fun and eventually get some nice looking gear for our work.
I'm kind of weary of open world PvP - it tends to be fun for the first few weeks and then dies out fairly quickly.
Have you considered non-fantasy based mmo? Hardcore pvp and mmo don't usually fit well together. There were a few games that tried it, but they are not too popular anymore (Aion, War, DAOC Lineage 2)
Currently I am playing EVE-Online and it doesn't get more hardcore then that. With some research you can get into some good pvp in about 4 weeks.
EVE is a lot different then the Themepark MMO's you might be used to. There are no arena's or bg's. Everything is done in the world which is alive and kicking. It's a very punishing system. If you get killed, you lose your ship, have to rebuy another (or manufacture one if you have the blueprints) refit it with weapon/modules.. etc.. (although you can insure your ship). You also get to loot the enemy ship of whatever didn't get destroyed in the ship exploding. You can get bounties on your head and start whole wars... it's quite epic.
That's the only recommendation I can give you if you are into hardcore PVP and want an MMO. I would also keep an eye out on Xsyon. It's PVP is quite interesting. It's in beta about to get released. It's also another sandbox style game. Combat is clunky in it atm but it's getting a revamp.
I have a 35 Dwarf Rogue (Assassin/nightblade/bladedancer) on deepstrike and have been loving the pvp. I have been doing open world PVP and doing the warfronts. The only thing trion needs to do with open world PVP is add some objectives and RIFT pvp will be up there near the top of the list. The warfronts(BGs) are similar to other games I've played. ATM there are 3 warfront maps available with 7 at launch.
The Codex = graphically superior Arathi Basin
The Black Garden =a graphically superior version of EQ2's gears of Klak'anon in an outdoor setting
Whitefall Steps = Capture the flag in a winter setting
If you are truely a hardcore PVPer there is only Darkfall but if you just crave PVP fun then RIFT makes the cut
I was going to provide the complete opposite response after reading the title of your thread. However, after reading your post and realizing you are a "hardcore pvper coming from WoW" I changed my mind. Rift may be right up your alley PvP wise. Battlegrounds/their equivilant and world pvp generally with little worth fighting over (IMO).
Has anyone had a chance to level up decently during the previous or current beta of Rift and gotten a sniff at the PvP in the game? I'm looking to move onto something from WoW and was hoping Rift could be my new home.
Doubtful. You might be better served to try Dark Fall, Mortal Online or Earth Rise. They are all PvP games first and fore most. Rift is much more focused on PvE(as most western games are these days). While I consider that quite a plus, some do not. From what I've seen, Rift is much like WoW would have been if it had launched in 2011, rather than 2004. Given that I have four 85's and an 82, I also consider that a plus. ^^
Has anyone had a chance to level up decently during the previous or current beta of Rift and gotten a sniff at the PvP in the game? I'm looking to move onto something from WoW and was hoping Rift could be my new home.
Gonna have to agree with others- this is probably not the game for you. I'm not sure what features exactly you are looking for as a "hardcore PvP'er" but seeing as you're coming from WoW my guess is you're looking for something with measure, like the ranked arenas and Rift has none of that. They have PvP servers like WoW does, and instanced warfronts (battlegrounds)- that's pretty much it.
If you love pvp battlegrounds and world pvp you'll love rift. You can circle strafe clickers just like in wow. One person said there's only one warfront no there's not. There's 2 at level 20+ just like world of warcraft only had warsong gulch. By the way, when world of warcraft released and for a whole year there was no pvp battlegrounds system at all aside from world pvp. It took even longer for arenas to become created. Rift already has battlegrounds in place with honor points rewards and pvp daily quests and the game is still in beta.
When comparing the two games you have to compare the two games where they used to be in that stage of development. Rift has topped wow already.
Comments
probably not
at lvl 20 i have only seen one instance. capture the flag (fang) theme. It gets mindlessly boring after a while. The classes are pretty imbalanced atm. The game runs pretty smooth in pvp and you can get exp while you are in there which is cool. Other than that though it got old for me pretty fast.
Warriors with just about any two soul combo's will run thru everything out there. I was playing a mage just cause i am stubborn and it was a diefest. When I rolled a warrior on this last event he was absurdly op'ed.
My advice would be to wait for a few weeks and do the 7 day trial. I am a hardcore pvp'er as well and bought the game for that reason. I don't see myself playing past the first month.
You want real hardcore pvp might I suggest Darkfall, DAOC, or Ultima Online.
I started playing Rifts for the first time tonight and im on the fence about it. It looks visually appealing and very polished and I like the soul system but its really really easy to me granted im only lvl 8 but it just seems like your going to be able to solo everything aside from the dungeons. Can anyone confirm this? I dont want a solofest game either and I want pvp to be meaningful not just battleground type crap. On top of that theres only 3 races per realm which I thought was lame.
On another note I cant stand the community in game so far, I clicked my combat tab to watch damage and later on in the night I clicked back to chat and the first word I read was pubes, and wow this and wow that. *bangs head off keyboard* ive about given up on this genre aside from a few choice games.
Go play some GW my friend
You need to define what you are looking for? As you mention WoW and "hardcore" - I'm going to guess your version is more about going to WoW-math sites and running your max-spec'd chars in arena combat vs. singles and groups of other like-minded players... with no risk involved, other than your statistical ranking.
I think others would describe "hardcore" as PvP without restrictions and risk to your character's progression and gear.
I'll describe my experiences with RIFT and you can decide how that fits for you.
WoW has PvP mini-games. Rift will have essentially these same mini-games - though more similar in style to WAR. The AV clone might function better, though apparently will be smaller in scope 20v20 vs. 40v40 (if I remember).
WoW has an arena. Rift has no arena.
WoW has no open-world PvP (really it doesn't, don't kid yourself). Rift is implementing various objectives and mechanisms (as I type) to encourage open-world PvP. Remains to be seen how fun they are... I'd check the forums for various evaluations.
There is a PvP death penalty in Rift in the open world - in the form of some coins for soul restoring. There is none in WoW.
I wouldn't say that is a fair assumption. While WoW happens to be my game of choice, I choose it only for the reason that it is where my friends reside. We are both looking for something different as we are burned out with WoW. We do arena, both 2s and 3s, although we aren't top tier.
We most run in PUGs, the 2 or 3 of us, not in full pre-mades. We don't really care about rating or any of the such - we just wanna have fun and eventually get some nice looking gear for our work.
I'm kind of weary of open world PvP - it tends to be fun for the first few weeks and then dies out fairly quickly.
I spent several hours just pvping on both Defiants and Guardians. The defiants win about 75 pct of the runs on the cluster I am on. The classes are insanely unbalanced. The only pvp instance that I have seen under 19 is a keep the fang....first one to 500 wins. Once everyone figured out to take the fang to the very top by their spawn point it pretty much became first team to get the fang wins. At times the game stays in the middle and it is just a street fight. The tanks just bulldoze to the back and eat the casters up. With a few fully specced healers and a few tanks you can just decimate the guardians.
Sub 20 pvp is fun for about an hour then it just becomes frustrating. I do like the ability to mix and match soul trees and really customize your toon to your playstyle but that is a small plus compared to the horrible class balance and a really bad instance.
This is an interesting game but it is NOT a pvp game. War had much better instances and more balanced play than this does and i left that game after a few months. Again it is an interesting game but if I am going to just pve there are much better games out there.
Rift is a PvE game first and then a PvP game. So no it isn't really oriented on being a hard core pvp game. That said it does have open world pvp servers and various pvp instances like wow. But the balance is not sacraficing the pve game for pvp balance.
---
Ethion
I don't know what you guys are talking about, I was playing a Warlock/Chloromancer/Necromancer and just my 4-5 dots ate the tanks by like 75%, I also have a 1.5 sec cast, instant nuke,stun,fear,slow,heal on damage etc it is fairly balanced, Warriors are just easier to learn than the other classes it is 1-2-3 finisher repeat. Once you truelly learn your mage you will destroy (so much CC, AoE and direct nukes), same for rogues sustained DPS with the 5 combo nuke, clerics ive never tried one so i couldnt say but i sure know healing>tank damage,
I have a feeling this game will be great for PvP but itll take at least a month of play with 1 class to get used to the whole soul system synergy learning curve etc.
Slow/fear> warriors.
DCUO has good PVP too.
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Totec/022011/21471 <---- My take on Rift's PvP.
About all of the Warhammer community that I know, is moving to Rift. I'd call that a PvP community for the most part. All of those I've talked to are so far happy with it. Everyone has there own opinion. Its like over half of the server I used to be on. Though Warhammer is a dying game and they need to go some place. Just pointing out they Picked Rift :shrug:
I spent all of Sunday pvping the two lvl 17's i had rolled. Here are several impressions:
The pvp did get better as I got a better unsderstanding of the class and my wacky build(as previous poster noted)
They give you 3 soul traits/options. They tell you which they think works best together. On several beta builds i went with their recommended builds. On the last toon I rolled I put what I wanted in a toon which worked much better. You can build a mage/healer if u want or a roque/marksman/bard. I enjoyed being able to work my build, as crazy as it was and make it work.
players that went up one tree early seemed to do better, delivering big doses of dmg fast.
the weapons you get from quests are not as good as what you can make with limited crafting skills. in about 20 min of crafting i had a weapon that was max for my toon. I would harvest the wood and ore while i was questing.
lving is insanely ez if you run around closing rifts.
one tree healers are impossible to kill alone in the teens.
Someone had posted about the community and I have NEVER seen a good beta community.
One run in an instance will give you about 10-20 pct of a lvl which i loved.
Some classes are much better than others in pvp. Certain builds just will not work as well in pvp as they do in pve. I am hoping they allow a 2 build system that you can change back and forth. that would allow each class to be more competetive in pvp instances.
at lvl 19 i did wander into the open pvp zone and found people there more than willing to take my cyber life. I kept a lvl 25 busy and almost had him.
defiants on the pod i was on won more often. prob about 60-70 pct.
pvp ques were much faster on the guardian side. most of them instant to under 5 min. Defiants were 5 min +.
the rifts have great graphics and it does feel nasty when you are in them.
If they can put out a few more quality instances the game could be better than wow pvp IFFF they make the pvp gear competetive to the raid gear. Wow always got off track with uber raid gear being so much better than pvp gear.
I plan on sticking around for a few months to see where they take this game. I was in the wow beta and i can say Rift is MUCH further along at the same point in every aspect, especially pvp. wOW did not even have a pvp instance at launch and when they did roll them out they were single server with 60 min wait times. As you can see by my posts above I am not a fanboi. I was kinda hard on the game but once I did my builds my way the game was a lot more fun.
I usually don't post in forums, I just read, but I thought I'd share my PvP experiences this last weekend.
Overall the warfronts are pretty good, and I had your typical "OMG team sucks" experience, and also tons of good up and down back and forth matches too. Those matches are really what you make them, I feel.
I wanted to talk about the open world PvP in Scarlet Gorge and Scarwood Reach. This is where I had a TON of fun. They designed these zones to be shared by both factions, and your quests chains end up running into each other in the middle - and the chaos is wonderful. I was going after a linear quest objective and got sidetracked by some Guardian jerk who tried to jump me. The whole thing escalated into a big open world battle for no real reason, but it was wonderful. Didn't actually get back to my quest until like 2 hours later.
And then they throw in world events that I've been a part of twice. And they went down totally differently. The first one was a complete failure - A large raid and then some of my Defiant comrades caught up to this giant elite mob with like half a million HP or something, and we started working away at it, and then this giant raid of Guardians shows up and all hell broke loose. Half of us went off to fight the Guardians, while the other half tried to finish the boss but ended up getting stomped because we lost the healers. It was a mess but tons of fun, because you just can't script those wtf moments. The second time was really WEIRD. Guardians and Defiants caught up to the boss at the same time... and nobody attacked each other. We pretty much worked TOGETHER to bring the boss down and succeed in the mission. It was AMAZING. I have no idea how that ended up happening but it was such a twist! We worked side by side and broke down the boss... and then we stood there staring at each other for a few seconds after the boss collapsed...
And then hell broke loose again.
I must say these kinds of stories are really what made PvP this weekend really fun for me, and I'm glad I rolled on a PvP server.
I sometimes find myself feeling like a spoiled brat. After playing pvp in GW I find all of these open world pvp and battlegrounds to be rather.....crappy. The imbalance and chance for a good match is very very low. You usually end up winning all by blow out(or close) or losing all by blowout(or close).
When there is no matchmaking ala fps or no level parity, things can get ugly really fast. Add to that the fact that gear is also a factor and in rift you have a ton of classes and pvp is pretty bad imo. I like more of the GW approach where they limit the amount of things that can influence a battle and let it run down to the basics. Skill, team work and strategy. This makes for way more interesting matches where you get more of a challenge. Still GW had one big drawback that I hope they fix for GW2, match making(I know GvG has it, but thats about it). FPS's have it, sports games have it, even RTS's have it!
Regarding open world pvp, I see were there is a lot of fun to be had. When the prize for it can be territory or "honor" currency for your faction and it dwelves more into the storyline. That I do like, but that I do not know if Rift has. I know they have battlegrounds, but I do not know how does their world pvp work or even if they have any. If you like meaninless pvp with lots of frustration, you will love the warfronts!
The pvp is terrible here. Go play HoN or something!
Have you considered non-fantasy based mmo? Hardcore pvp and mmo don't usually fit well together. There were a few games that tried it, but they are not too popular anymore (Aion, War, DAOC Lineage 2)
Currently I am playing EVE-Online and it doesn't get more hardcore then that. With some research you can get into some good pvp in about 4 weeks.
EVE is a lot different then the Themepark MMO's you might be used to. There are no arena's or bg's. Everything is done in the world which is alive and kicking. It's a very punishing system. If you get killed, you lose your ship, have to rebuy another (or manufacture one if you have the blueprints) refit it with weapon/modules.. etc.. (although you can insure your ship). You also get to loot the enemy ship of whatever didn't get destroyed in the ship exploding. You can get bounties on your head and start whole wars... it's quite epic.
That's the only recommendation I can give you if you are into hardcore PVP and want an MMO. I would also keep an eye out on Xsyon. It's PVP is quite interesting. It's in beta about to get released. It's also another sandbox style game. Combat is clunky in it atm but it's getting a revamp.
I have a 35 Dwarf Rogue (Assassin/nightblade/bladedancer) on deepstrike and have been loving the pvp. I have been doing open world PVP and doing the warfronts. The only thing trion needs to do with open world PVP is add some objectives and RIFT pvp will be up there near the top of the list. The warfronts(BGs) are similar to other games I've played. ATM there are 3 warfront maps available with 7 at launch.
The Codex = graphically superior Arathi Basin
The Black Garden =a graphically superior version of EQ2's gears of Klak'anon in an outdoor setting
Whitefall Steps = Capture the flag in a winter setting
If you are truely a hardcore PVPer there is only Darkfall but if you just crave PVP fun then RIFT makes the cut
I was going to provide the complete opposite response after reading the title of your thread. However, after reading your post and realizing you are a "hardcore pvper coming from WoW" I changed my mind. Rift may be right up your alley PvP wise. Battlegrounds/their equivilant and world pvp generally with little worth fighting over (IMO).
Steam: Neph
Doubtful. You might be better served to try Dark Fall, Mortal Online or Earth Rise. They are all PvP games first and fore most. Rift is much more focused on PvE(as most western games are these days). While I consider that quite a plus, some do not. From what I've seen, Rift is much like WoW would have been if it had launched in 2011, rather than 2004. Given that I have four 85's and an 82, I also consider that a plus. ^^
Gonna have to agree with others- this is probably not the game for you. I'm not sure what features exactly you are looking for as a "hardcore PvP'er" but seeing as you're coming from WoW my guess is you're looking for something with measure, like the ranked arenas and Rift has none of that. They have PvP servers like WoW does, and instanced warfronts (battlegrounds)- that's pretty much it.
Hardcore PvPer + tab targeting o_0
If you love pvp battlegrounds and world pvp you'll love rift. You can circle strafe clickers just like in wow. One person said there's only one warfront no there's not. There's 2 at level 20+ just like world of warcraft only had warsong gulch. By the way, when world of warcraft released and for a whole year there was no pvp battlegrounds system at all aside from world pvp. It took even longer for arenas to become created. Rift already has battlegrounds in place with honor points rewards and pvp daily quests and the game is still in beta.
When comparing the two games you have to compare the two games where they used to be in that stage of development. Rift has topped wow already.