Hm, I really don't want a shitty PvP mode done by somebody with the editor tbh.
And don't forget data-match. You can't play with other people in co-op if they don't have exactly the same version like you. That makes it very hard to play in co-op when using a lot of mods.
With a PvP arena mode from the beginning you could always play with (against) people with a vanilla version.
I'd be more interested in a way to sync mods between clients then (client versions would of course still have to be "hard" enforced) as that would also greatly benefit people playing together with modified copies. Sort of like the original Unreal Tournament did it (but with an easy way to see what you downloaded, where they got it from and the ability to easily extract said mods, say, for backing up), of course the internet has arguably grown a lot nastier since those days so I dunno how secure that system actually is/was (I've never had issues with it at least), but I'll leave security questions to people actually competent in such matters.
And I don't share your lack of faith in the community to come up with awesome PvP mods if given the right tools,
it wouldn't exactly be the first time (arguably that was already a PvP game, but they turned it into something pretty much 100% different from the original).
Anyway, I'd rather have it so people get all the tools to do crazy stuff *not* intended by the devs rather than a straight up PvP mod. Like more control over the abilites, or the party (which would ofc benefit arena PvP modders as well), I think it would be cool if people managed to set up weird persistent worlds with even weirder mechanics (some weird form of multiplayer Might & Magic anyone?). I'm not even sure if ingame matchmaking would still make much sense if such diverse ways to play were possible.
But maybe I went way overboard now, but still, MMO toolkits tend to be flexible, some of the crazy stuff built for the NWNs is testament to that.
EDIT: I think I somewhere lost my thread of thought and went on a rant along a different thread...
