Your best raid or mass pvp experience across the genre?

PvE? probably My first Ragnaros kill, or killing the broodmother dragon (whatever her name was) in Ulduar on the night it was released - One more try! and it all clicked. One of the attempts where the whole raid gave it their 110%.

PvP: Hall of Heroes in GW1 back when holding it meant you could get into Underworld/FoW, but that was 8v8v8 IIRC, otherwise it would have to be castle sieges in Lineage 2, so much politics and backstabbing it would make new people's head spin. The game even had keyboard hotkeys to enable low detail graphics which were pretty much necessary for any mass player event.

Siege Perilous, Darktide, RZ, SZ, Shadowbane, early DaOC, In Por Ylem 1, early red99

PvP, when I was awarded my gladiator title season 1 of WoW (for 5s)... Close second would be a big fight around unrest right at the start of Sullon Zek or some massive fight in south/ro or around plane of (hate/fear whichever one had cazic-thule), don't remember the exact reason.

PVE: best raid was beating ragnaros for the first time. I'd rank him up there easily as one of the most epicly designed boss encounters in any video game, ever, from the lore buildup, to the actual encounter, to the culmination of months of playing, with the zone design and voiced dialogue. I can understand why my guild fell apart after beating it, I felt like I'd "beaten the game" at that point.

PVE- First NToV clear, VEX, and Potime.

PvP- RZ- Peacebreakers vs the server was fun. Was PB vs AD, MiM, Wudan and more. RZ was harsh back then, no safe zone and corpse camping!
SZ wars with ToW and what was the good teams guild ? Black something. Great trains by all bards, Speedd waking up at 3am everynight to stop Nuets progression.
I also enjoyed all the Zeks merging and the 100 man wars with Defiant, Pandimonium, and Ascending Dawn when they wouldn't just run.

GW2 had some great moments until it became clear that ArenaNet hated WvW and they didn't take it seriously.

PVE: Lots of good memories here. First time killing AoW and Rallos in EQ. In WoW, Molten Core / BWL, Black Temple (Illidan and Council stood out) were definitely fun, but the big rushes came out in WoTLK for me. 10-man 3-Drakes was awesome and as others have said Ulduar with the difficulty swaps (hated "hard-mode" flagging...Ulduar had the right idea).

PVP: Hands down Ultima Online before Feluccia/Trammel bullshit. Lake Superior shard had USA vs. Japan pretty much daily before server maintenance. Did some awesome fun stuff in a guild of thieves (we stole deeds to build an entire city...only access via marked runes). I loved how open concept PVP was in this game.

PVE: Server first Yelanik was awesome. We tried it with about 300 people and failed and failed. Our raid leader finally freaked out and kept about 4-5 solid groups or whatever we killed him effortlessly. We had a Plane of Sky raid and on the last island I was the last on alive one time and that was pretty awesome.




PvP: There was a time when EQ2 had the absolute best PvP. I loved the massive armies that fought in Kylong Plains and there was some great gankings in TT. It was just a lot of fun but the more they changed it the worse it became. I can remember some fun in DAoC and WAR actually. DAoC was probably the best overall PvP experience but I spent the most PvP time in EQ2.

Muligan_sl said:

There was a time when EQ2 had the absolute best PvP.

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My mind is full of fuck. Esplain Lucy.

UO; Atlantic, Covetous Wars.
EQ; Rallos Zek, Mass guild wars 250+ players fighting over Plane of Fear, Venril Sathir, nTOV, etc.

The Plane of Fear... with all the wipes, lost xp, begging for help and then the ultimate victory over Cazic Thule months later. Death touches, zone wide trains bys noobs, the sound effects, graphic design, learning the pulls, etc etc etc.... there has never been a zone so totally fucked up as PoF. Although the Plane of Hate is a close second.

All other raids in other games are just over scripted crap created by well meaning, but totally clueless, mmo-tards who don't realize that their over designed hoop jumping check sheets are boring.







Consequence and the fear of it is what makes a game / raid memorable and meaningful. The same is true in life.

In vanilla wow my off-spec was Ret as a pally in all the BiS dps gear. we had a 10 man team for WSG including our server first Grand Marshal and would just ass-fuck every single team we came across. One shotting assholes with SoC crits and two diesel healers following us everywhere.

It was really poor design but I always loved the idea of "we're the best in pve, and also best in pvp" for our server.

PvP: Planetside

PvE: EQ

Furious_sl said:

Black something.

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Prophecy IIRC

Agraza_sl said:

My mind is full of fuck. Esplain Lucy.

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It wasn't so much of what they had right but rather how many bought in to it. It was nothing to see 100 vs 100 in Kylong with 40-50 of the neutral guys coming in to gank. It was just fun mainly because of the people. Everyone knew the good and bad. Gank spots were fun. It was really timing and it didn't last much more than a year and then went down hill fast.

EQ: first naggy kill. that was my first "raid" experience (although at the time it was a combination of several random groups and not just one guild). the first time being in the plane of fear and the plane of hate (never realized a fucking video game could make me feel that scared). but i think if i had to choose an overall number 1, it would be first avatar of war kill. i don't care what people say, he had to be one of the hardest fucking kills in MMO history.

All of my best pvp and raiding experiences come from eq2. Recently described this here on another thread but anytime you are pvp-ing and raiding at the same time ( i.e. contested mobs ) you are in for quite a ride... best MMO times i have ever had.

PVP
I never got to play DAOC or Shadowbane long enough to really enjoy the PVP. Shadowbane I kept getting ganked by high level bastards and I did a siege that just bored me because I barely had any involvement personally. Did have some fun on the various EQ PVP servers. But my best experience by far was WoW on a PVP server. This was before WOTLK era. I was a druid and my favourite zone was this jungle type place. I was questing there but I would gank players if I ever saw one, or die trying. I saw a paladin fighting and I waited for them to be injured before I attacked, but they never really got injured. They were also the same level as me or maybe one higher, so it was risky. I stalked them through the grass in stealth lion form, stalking people was so fucking fun. Then I pounced! Ripping in to their back with a backstab damage over time and stun, but it barely did anything. Then they ran so I went in to caster form and cast some spells on them and then she noticed that I had barely even scratched her. So she just turned around came for me I went in to bear form and managed to tank and with some kiting I managed to get her to about 50% but so was I. In the end I ran and cast spells on her as she chased and then she got injured. Then she ran so I turned and chased her and went back in to lion form to chase and backstab. It was back and forth like that, we ran all over the fucking zone, fight must have lasted 5 minutes. But it's about the most fun I have ever had in an MMO. Beats any raid or anything. Nothing got my adrenaline going like that before or since.


PVE:
I had more fun groups usually than raids, but I did a LOT of raiding in Shards of Dalaya because its basically an EQ Emulator server that is mostly focused on raiding. There is a huge amount of raid content. There was one particular encounter we did (guild I was in) that was really hard. It was just so finely tuned down to the fucking last hit point. I think it was an 18 person raid. Basically it needed 2 tanks, MT on the big bad guy, and an off tank on his assistant who was immune to most control spells so he had to be off tanked. But at various points, adds would spawn and the tanks couldnt disengage so all the dps would have to kite these adds all over the place or die. Someone had to snare them and then everyone had to run around kiting them while trying to kill them, and even the healers had to kite because they would aggro whoever. And both healers and dps had to do that while still occasionally assisting the main tank and off tank or they would die. Then near the end, a third big mob would spawn and a chanter had to charm that, and set it on the 2 main guys and try to kill one so that the last 2 could be tanked. We tried like 10 times and kept failing for various reasons (there was enrage and flurry and devastating blow and all kinds of shit we had to deal with in addition to just kiting). Everyone was pissed off and wanted to sleep, but we gave it one last shot.. That last attempt worked, but almost everyone died during the fight, and by the time we were down to the final boss, it was only me (cleric), the 2 tanks, and one dps left. Everyone else was dead, even star monk who basically never died, and I had no mana to really do much either. I just basically bit my nails while watching the last mobs hp sloooowly go down as just 2 tanks 1 mostly oom druid whittled it down. And eventually it died... Phat loot was had by all.

Pvp -- hands down DAOC. Lots of fun memories of 8v8, 8vZ, Keep offense/defense, DF facerolls, small group pvp, stealth wars (before they got completely faggy), and even just you + 2-3 other guys decide you're bored and go spelunking in enemy frontiers with nothing but murder on your mind. The only thing daoc didn't do very well was 1v1. But if I hadn't hooked into an 8man guild daoc would have been meh. The great thing about that game is that sometimes it was even fun to lose.

Pve -- there's been lots of good raids, lots of bad raids. There is no best, really. But the good ones are always squeakers.