The mythical game that Jeff is talking about - the no mans land of PVP'ers and hardcore rules and real consequences and drama - existed about 17 years ago.
It was called Xenimus. It is still around, but in no way the same game.
I found it around 2001. It's a fairy terrible looking top down 3d MMORPG. There was about fifty people playing it when I found it. I got my buddies into it, and after a bout a year the player base had grown to a hundred or more.
The thing was, you dropped EVERYTHING when you died. Eventually items were added to prevent this, but there was a sweet spot of about two years when it was fucking lawless. People would grind for months to obtain high level items. There was no level cap and guys would get crazy strong. The combat was extremely fast paced and required crazy reactions. There was one safe zone in each town where you could not be killed, but everywhere outside was fair game. There was even a way to DE-LEVEL people
My buddies and I formed a bandit group and terrorized everyone. We would stalk players and ambush them. Four of us could take down a high level dude and take all his hard earned gear. We would keep it or auction it off on the message boards. We were fucking notorious and for a glorious year felt like actual bandits. It was amazing.
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