Emmanuelle Chriqui
This form of mindless competitive PvP is best demonstrated by the likes of Counter-Strike and other pure PvP FPSes. No storyline, no real objectives other than to get a higher score than the opposition. It's simple to implement and simple for players to understand. It doesn't appeal to me, and it generally attracts an inferior class of individual. The sort of players that feel they have to win at any cost, which is why competitive PvP is usually host to all manner of cheats and exploits, across all game genres.
The alternative to competitive PvP, although it's less appropriate within the context of FPS games, is what I call "role play" PvP. PvP that occurs as a side-effect of the design of the game world rather than forms the motivation for it. This can be as simple as having a game where you can choose to be lawful or criminal, where the goals of those opposing factions generally conflict, where a criminal can advance at the expense of an honest character (as a result of theft, or even murder perhaps) and it is also possible for the honest to advance at the expense of the criminals (bounty-hunting might be an example). The point is that the conflict itself is not the sole or even primary game objective for either side. Instead it's a natural byproduct of allowing for a broad spectrum of career paths within the game, and provides an element of genuine danger which enriches the game world. The trick is to achieve that without allowing griefers to essentially hold the game world to ransom.
Perhaps the most successful of current MMOs that has a genuine role play PvP component is Eve Online. As pretty much an MMO version of the classic Elite, players can follow a range of paths to fame and fortune, whether it's through law-abiding corporate business practice or piracy. The PvP in that case is not some sort of point-scoring exercise, rather players choosing piracy as a career are adding an immersive role play element to the game and are providing a compelling alternative to some AI-driven challenge to law-abiding players.
Of course piracy in Eve will still attract the same sort of educationally-subnormal sociopaths that populate competitive PvP games, but at least it's channeled into an aspect of the game that enhances rather than spoils the game environment for the more balanced and higher-functioning players.
From what I've heard about the almost mythical Ultima Online, that game took a similar approach to PvP with players able to choose a law-abiding or law-eschewing career path which could, but (and this is perhaps the crux of competitive vs. roleplay Pvp) didn't necessarily put those players in direct conflict. That wouldn't surprise me, as UO seems to have got a lot of things right which have subsequently been ignored and misinterpreted by more modern games.
It might seem that some games blur the distinction between competitive and role play PvP but in general if there's any doubt, you're talking about the competitive style. Warhammer might feature PvP set within the context of opposing factions, where the conflict is racially motivated, but the fact is that the races simply provide "teams", and the goal of one team is to pwn the other. In Counter-Strike the teams are terrorist vs. counter-terrorist, but the game is still very much competitive.
I know a lot of people are fans of competitive PvP, as evidenced by the enthusiam for Warhammer, and I freely admit that my preference for the elusive role play dynamic is entirely subjective. Perhaps I just haven't seen competitive PvP implemented in a way that appeals to me, or perhaps it's just that competitive PvP tends to attract the sort of people with whom I don't care to play.
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