also the biggest thing in all modern RPG's is PvP gaming.
ROFL, well IMHO PvP blows chunks, and there is a very large portion of the gaming community who feel the same way. Lets look at a couple of examples:
1). In Ultima Online there used to be only one way to play he game; PvE (Player-vs-Everything). The game was a mess due to out of control PvP, hacking, cheating, gangs of thugs running around just outside of town killing every newbie who logged into the game. It's fun factor was sinking fast.
So what did the designers do? They created essentially 2 side-by-side games, you could play in Fallucia (the PvP part of the game) or in Trammel (the non-PvP part of the game). What was the outcome of this change? The VAST majority of people moved to the non-PvP area, and left the small group of PvP fanatics crying that they no longer had anyone to kill - Fallucia became a near empty area of the game.
If you looked on eBay you would see houses and game accounts in the non-PvP area selling for hundreds, or even more than a thousand dollars. But houses and game accounts in the PvP area would not sell at all, or sell for less than $20.
2). Who can forget the impact that PvP had on Diablo? It became almost impossible to play on BattleNet without leaving the game in disgust due to the hacking, cheating, and wanton killing of players just trying to have fun in their game. Notice that BattleNet today has options to restrict who gets into your games, and weed out the PvP abusers.
3). Even Dark Age of Camelot had to add a specifically non-PvP shard; and that is in a game that was designed totally for PvP play. Now the PvP players complain that the non-PvP shard has more higher level characters, more crafters, more cash, etc. (which is true since those people spend their time actually playing the game, rather than sitting around waiting to ambush some lower level player - such a macho way to play a game).
DAoC, with their newest expansion is still concentrating on PvP and ignoring their non-PvP customers, which IMHO will prove to be a major mistake in the near future. Many of the people that I talk to in the game are just waiting for a new game release that is not PvP so they can bail out of DAoC.
Larian has made 2 excellent games for players who know how to think their way through complex puzzles and develop strategies to win difficult battles with hordes of monsters. Adding PvP, in any way, to their games will lose me as a customer. I want to beat the game, not have to put up with someone who just wants to ruin my fun.
However: I still think that the After-Game Battlefields are an ideal area to include TCP/IP support. The After-Game Battlefields are boring for single players, but would be great fun to team up with a friend and continue playing.