The Cyclical Failure of PvE/PvP Design and the Manufactured Drama That Sustains It

 Toxic positivity—despite how often the phrase is thrown around—has a very real presence in modern game communities, and its roots lie deeper than mere forum culture or fleeting trends. At the center of the issue is the way developers, Funcom included but by no means alone, persist in approaching the PvE/PvP divide as if it were an unalterable natural law. The result is a structural design philosophy that practically invites conflict and factionalism, even though the solution has long been understood in both game design theory and the simplest analogies drawn from everyday life.

Consider a school that hosts both science fairs and karate tournaments within a single gymnasium. Instead of allocating the space sensibly—so each activity can flourish without infringing on the other—the administration imposes artificial time windows during which either group may use the gym, while the rest of the time the gym remains closed to everyone. Then, to compound the absurdity, they decide that the science clubs and the karate teams must share the same pool of resources, as though the tools for one discipline could meaningfully support the other. When conflict inevitably arises, the proposed remedy becomes to separate the groups further, ask different staff to manage them, and eventually cultivate the mindset that “if you want karate, go to a different school; this one is for science.”

This is, in essence, the model that governs much of current PvE/PvP design. Developers segment gameplay around arbitrary windows, place both sides under a shared resource burden, and then respond to the resulting internal friction by isolating players into distinct, incompatible mindsets. All of it is unnecessary, and all of it goes against well-established design solutions that have existed for decades.

Why ignore the solutions? The answer is simple: influencers.

The rise of influencer culture has fundamentally altered the incentive structure for game developers. The modern marketing ecosystem rewards controversy, outrage, and spectacle. No one makes popular videos about systems that work well, communities that cooperate, or designs that quietly sustain a healthy playerbase for years. The algorithms amplify the aggrieved voices, the brooding monologues about how a game was, could be, or should be, and the never-ending churn of complaint that fuels comment sections and drives viewership. In turn, developers respond—consciously or not—by prioritizing dramatic, volatile systems that generate content, even when those systems undermine the long-term stability of their games.

It is not difficult to imagine alternate realities. EVE Online could have become a lasting MMO powerhouse rather than a niche universe buoyed by myth more than substance. World of Warcraft, beyond Wrath of the Lich King, might have retained far more of its audience had it not pursued the increasingly hollow mantra that the game must always be “exciting to watch.” Both serve as case studies in how the fixation on spectacle warps development priorities.

Whenever the PvE/PvP divide is discussed, the conversation tends to focus on improving one side or the other, as though raising the quality of each would somehow bridge the gap between them. In practice, this only widens the gulf. The better each mode becomes in isolation, the less compatible they are in tandem, and the more jarring their collision points become.

Guild Wars 2 provides a particularly revealing example. Its competitive PvP is notoriously troubled, lacking both mechanical depth and structural purpose, while open-world RP-driven conflict effectively does not exist. Yet the game once possessed a mode that genuinely addressed the PvE/PvP schism: World vs. World vs. World. WvW offered functional interdependence rather than forced coexistence. A player who preferred PvE could contribute by clearing camps, supplying forts, building siege equipment, or running safe routes. On realms that understood the mode’s cooperative nature, organized players who focused on tasks rather than player kills could secure victory through logistics, strategy, and structure.

For a time, this worked. It created a hybrid ecosystem in which different kinds of players had meaningful roles and did not cannibalize one another’s experience.

Then the developers, guided by modern design impulses and social-media-driven expectations, attempted to infuse WvW with an “esports atmosphere.” Safe contributions were eliminated. Defense was weakened across the board. Buffs that empowered builders and strategists were stripped away. Every alteration nudged the mode closer to a pure kill-or-be-killed arena, despite the fact that GW2 already had a dedicated PvP arena mode. The end result was predictable: players who enjoyed the strategic, logistical, or PvE-adjacent aspects of WvW simply left. Their absence then reinforced the shift toward pure conflict, because with fewer contributors maintaining structures and objectives, the only remaining viable gameplay loop was direct player combat.

This is how a mode once capable of harmonizing disparate playstyles was gradually contorted into something it was never meant to be.

No sandbox MMORPG can succeed—truly succeed—while clinging to the rigid dichotomy of PvE versus PvP. The belief that the divide can be solved by making one side better, or even both sides better, is a persistent misconception. At times, the best versions of PvE and PvP are inherently incompatible, not because either is flawed, but because their design goals diverge too sharply to coexist under the same ruleset. Layer on top of that the missteps of modern development priorities and the gravitational pull of social media drama, and the result is predictable: a dysfunctional relationship between player communities, and a design philosophy that repeatedly undermines itself.

Until developers recognize this, the cycle will continue.