My idea of PvP combat is to restrict PVP to personal duels and combat between guilds. Guilds can declare war on each other and then the members of the guilds can fight against each other whenever and whereever they want except in towns. To make pvp more attractive i propose a honor point concept.

Personal duels

When you want to fight someone, you can challenge him to a duel. He can then decide if he wants to fight you or not. When he doesn't it counts as an automatic win for you. When you win a duel against an opponent who is equally strong or stronger than you level-wise you gain some honor points. When you lose against a lower enemy you lose some honor point. When you win against a weaker enemy or lose against a stronger enemy (like it should be expected) nothing happens.

Guild war and peace

Every guildleader can declare war on other guilds. When he does so the members of both guilds receive a warning. About an hour after the guildleader declares war pvp is enabled between members of the two guilds everywhere except towns. The leaders of both guilds can offer peace at any time. When the offer is accepted pvp is immediately disabled between both guilds. Every kill of a member of an enemy guild gives an honor point for every guildmember and every death of a guildmember by the hands of an enemy guildmember means the lose of an honor point for every guildmember.

The idea is that when you are in a (wrong) guild you have the thrill of being attackable everywhere, but you know exactly who your enemies are. And when attacked by an overwhelming force you also know who to ask for help (that guys who lose honor points when they let you die). It also brings the interesting aspects of diplomacy (avoiding making the wrong enemies, threat other guilds with declaration of war, form alliances) and strategic warfare (keep members of enemy guilds away from key resources to weaken them) into the game.

When you are fed up with being attacked everywhere because your guild pissed off all the big pvp guilds you can still leave the guild and become a guildless player again.

Honor points

Collecting honor points in pvp combat should give both the individual character advantages as it gives the guild advantages when it got members with many honor points.

Players could have the following advantages when they collect enough honor points:

• A good position on a scoreboard
• Access to special quests
• Access to prestige equipment
• Advances when dealing with npc's
• Of course they will be more popular in guilds because the guilds honor points are the sum of the honor points of their members.

Guilds could have the following advantages when the sum of the honor points of their members is high:

• A good postion on a guild scoreboard
• The right to have a guild emblem
• Access to guild equipment (like shields or capes with the guild emblem visible)
• More organisational guild features
  • Giving guild members special tasks like recruiter, treasurer etc. that give them some privileges of the guild leader
  • higher member limit
  • creating private chat channels in which other people can be invited
  • option to form sub guilds
  • etc.
• Access to a private guild headquarter ranging from a little meeting hut to a huge castle.