Why hasn't it happened

Here are a couple of reasons off the top of my head.

Historically speaking, in the MMO market, FFA realms do not build and hold a player base as well as a standard rule set. People get frustrated and that hostility plays itself out in a number of ways. Increased CS workload, quitting, etc. There have been some good articles on the web about this sort of thing and its limited successes.

Another reason, more specific to this game, is that it would require support of different coding at this point. Effectively, we would have to support two different clients, because of the changing of the ruleset between one and the other. Coupled with the above reason, we haven't seen anything in terms of demand that would balance out the cost necessary to make this supportable.

Not to say it will never happen or that we don't still consider it, but those are the chips as they lie at this time.

Q u o t e:
There should be a free-for-all PvP arena.

Oh, wait, there are more than one already. :)

Indeed. ;)

Q u o t e:


Why, exactly, can you not just force the PVP flag on for everyone at all time?

Because it's a little more complicated than flipping a switch and walking away. Every zone in the game would have to be adjusted. Any number of NPCs would have to be re-flagged. While that would take development time away from everything else, that really isn't the worst part.

As I said before, which people seem to be glossing over, you're developing two different environments. What if something is bugged in an FFA realm but not in a standard PVE/PVP realm? There's QA being spread out between two game environments for testing. What if there is a more critical bug affecting the standard realms? It will probably get priority, which means you're one FFA realm is seeing bugs, which obviously the player base will deem critical in itself, that is going to be prioritized based on the number of people it's affecting, which is very few comparitively.

It's about flipping switches to PvP about as much as the internet is a series of tubes.

Q u o t e:


Tseric, I and I'm sure many others would appreciate it if you woulds stop making stuff up when talking about programming. There's absolutely no need for separate client to allow permanent free for all.

Ah, I see. So I'll just discount the advice offered to me from the designers and programmers when I brought this up the last time. Surely, I should have consulted you first, yes?

Q u o t e:

Hey, PvP and PvE servers require two separate clients, amirite?

The client was designed with PvE/PvP intergration in mind. While FFA is not out of the realm of possibility, it was not specifically designed to support that switch. Change would come with cost. That being my starting point.

Q u o t e:

To clarify, we've already got FFA Horde v. Alliance PVP in Contested zones. We've got dueling between members of the same faction... what's left to test?

Ok, let's take one example you bring up, then. Dueling. In an FFA enivronment, is issuing a request to duel going to confuse the game? It is trying to get into a state it already is in. Will it bug out with redundancy?

Consider another example. Town guards. Is it now easier to raid a town because guards might aggro same-faction griefing or do the guards only target other factions? Does this create a fair environment? Does it create other unintended opportuinites which could be exploited?

Many of this games mechanics are based on faction-PvP and as such, create completely different effects in an FFA environment. Any one command might bug out, be completely negated or create an unintended effect which would require a design solution.