As we have progressed into more massive online games, we have quickly lost one of the most fun and entertaining parts of PvP (second behind the actual slaughtering).

Due to the amount of players, the kiddie mentality of most of those players, the chat systems, the fragmentation of community, and some game design components… we have almost totally lost the in game (and to some extent, the out of game) aspect of trash talking.

The current state of trash talking is World of Warcraft or Age of Conan is someone doing a /spit emote on a corpse or /saying ‘Haha pwned.’ Really, it is a sad state of affairs.

What do most of these games have in common?

1. Lack of community in game
2. Lack of centralized forum or meeting place out of game
3. Weak chat interface
4. Game play moves too fast

Since the game play is never going to get slower, the real improvements need to be made around community building — something that has been in a state of decline since the days of the old Neverwinter Nights.

In game
The in game experience can be improved with a robust and easy to use chat system that lets players communicate without jumping through hurdles.

Out of game
The out of game experience can be improved by creating a community forum that fosters trash talking and inter-guild and inter-player communications (and does not have the sheer amount of drivel and dumbness that something like the WoW forums has). This is extremely difficult because of the need for moderation on the game owner’s side and the factionization of current PvP guilds (everyone has their own site and own forums).

Personally, only 50-60% of the fun comes from actually winning or losing in PvP. For me, the rest comes from the trash talk and storytelling that these battles would/could lead to… if there was a proper forum for it.