Fair enough! Hopefully this time some organized stuff can happen again since the games systems are far more supportive of it than DS1 was at least on the netcode/covenant front. We will have to see. But Demon's Souls is still the best for it though. *fanboi 4 lyfe yo*

@tennmuerti: @karkarov: Oh yeah, well with all things online play it's "your mileage may vary", that's why I gave the heads up that there'll definitely be a few assholes who will try some foul play on you. I guess I've just been lucky then or have been dueling with a handful of the same guys. The few times where the enemy started out behind me trying to backstab me or cast an aoe spell I've been able to roll out of the way immediately. But everytime I get summoned I just have to expect that will happen. I was around SL 210 (SM 8mil'ish) when I was doing the dragon duels so there may be more decent people around there? who knows.

@zevvion: Fully agreed, I find "nukers" to go down very easily when I duel them. I do carry around a fully upgraded rebel shield that's just great with overall magic defense but that's a last resort. I usually go for the dodge and stab as they try to shoot something straight at me or when they do soul sword. The homing stuff is trickier to dodge which is where the shield comes in. But when I do get a hit though I get hit hard, so I absolutely have to be on my A game in terms of dodging or I could eat it.

@lanechanger@tennmuerti@karkarov@zevvion

Thanks guys. Nice to hear more about how people are using the Dragon Covenant. I should point out though that I never expected anything which would stop the people who wanted to exploit the PvP. My expectation would be that if I were to search out the PvP and actively try it out (i.e. do the Dragon Covenant thing on the Bridge in the Iron Keep, as suggested - still not there yet, but I haven't actually played any Dark Souls 2 since I wrote the comment since I haven't had the time - only time was to try out some screen shot stuff for that other thread in between going from one place I needed to be at to another)...

My expectation is that when I go into the PvP actively, I will be killed significantly more and most of them will be cheap tricks. But that doesn't really bother me as a player (like, when my controller disconnects and I die in the PvE - it sure sucks, but I'll just try again; No big deal). I'd play it for the people who don't do that and, more specifically, the close fights when it is clear me and the opponent have varied strengths and weaknesses which makes our match-up quite even and challenging. The times when that isn't the case would be in the grey area between neutral and annoying, but I wouldn't care that much.