PVE in games like WoW

PVE (player versus enemy) is of course the heart and soul of the traditional RPG. Since the 1970's with Dungeons and Dragons (and numerous other tabletop RPG's - there are a whole lot that aren't D&D too), nerds have gathered in the name of dungeon sacking, monster slaying, and loot grabbing. And if you think everyone who plays D&D is lame, take a look at this list and be wildly amazed at who plays and has played.

This is your graphics in WoW.

This is your graphics in D&D.

Source: Museum of Computer Adventure Game History 

The earliest MMOs, which were called Multi-User Dungeons, or MUDs for short. They were basically the evolutionary link between D&D and MMOs as we know them today. Most used D&D mechanics and D&D monsters. All of the early ones were text based, such as Zork - then there were also games like Nethack which were dungeon crawlers.

Running a dungeon in WoW.

Running a dungeon in D&D.

Source: www.tenkarstavern.com

All would be classified as unplayably punishingly hard if they were published today. The internet would explode with a bustle of irrational hatred like a hornet's nest being kicked, gamers would crawl out of the woodworks to shout their defiance at the design, and the developers probably wouldn't see any kind of commercial success. People think that newfangled games like Dark Souls are "that" hard. Not really. With the old games, there was really zero forgiveness. If you want to try these games today, do so at your own peril to your sanity. Really.

Running a dungeon in Zork!

 Source: www.browserrousers.com

*ahem* Anyway, in WoW, PVE has gotten very well developed over time. Well, Everquest and such games came before WoW, but they were much more basic in a lot of ways, even though they had rabidly loyal fanbases in most cases. These games had a lot of shortcomings though. As MMO's continued to become more sophisticated, trolls had to work harder to grief players, mischievous folk had a tougher time trying to break the game for fun, etc. You can see that from stories such as this from Reddit that early MMO's were pretty susceptible to things like exploitable errors in the game's engine.

Whereas the basic paradigm in PVP is a cycle between the basic archetypes of Warrior, Rogue, and Mage, PVE has the basic principles of Tank, Healer, and Damager. These are also from the early days of tabletop games. Not really present in the earliest single player adventure games since there was only 1 player, though. But the main idea is that the Tank will "taunt" monsters with a variety of skills, strategies, and straight damage. This is often quantified in computer games as Hate or Aggression (called Aggro, most commonly), points that determine who the monster attacks. The Damager (sometimes called DPS for short, as in damage per second) will attempt to get in as much damage as possible without pulling more "Aggro" than the Tank - the Tank specializes in defense, but the Damager usually will not be able to use much armor or defensive abilities, and usually is pretty "squishy" in comparison. The Healer has the basic task of keeping everyone in the group alive, and primarily heals the Tank, to give more survivability. They also tend to have a lot of utility abilities, primarily "buffs", which are abilities used to increase specific stats such as attack, armor, or speed; and others such as reviving fallen party members, and sometimes things like teleporting, or game specific abilities, although this is more par for the course for Wizard archetypes, and not necessarily Priests, but there can be a great deal of overlap, especially taken as a whole.

In WoW, for instanced dungeons that you can queue into from anywhere in the world, there are usually 3 damage spots, 1 tank spot, and 1 healer spot. Although I've yet to do a raid, I've read about them, and they can run up to 40+ people typically, and will take an entire guild (or several) cooperating for hours to reach the end.

PVE in its most basic form is just having fun with friends, killing monsters and taking the treasures that they drop. You could say that the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, and Tolkien's work at large, were the beginning roots of PVE, because D&D's main influence was Lotr.

Source: whoathisisheavy.blogspot.com

Think about the trolls from The Hobbit (movie or book, also mention in The Lord of the Rings). The adventuring party was in peril. Bilbo uses his quick thinking to trick the trolls into staying up until after dawn and turning to stone. They raid the trolls' cache of loot and get some badass swords and stuff. Classic PVE.

Source: lotr.wikia.com

Even for people who have just seen the first Hobbit movie, I mean, it's still pretty obvious who the boss is going to be. So that's PVE basically; working together to kill monsters and get loot and experience, in order to have more cool adventures, and to gather wealth and fame.

And, I mean, this is also really fun to do in a single player game, and I honestly couldn't say which is ultimately better in that regard. Stories and battles can be experience in both single and team capacities. Neither one is uniquely superior. Playing a game of D&D on a Friday night at a friend's house can be great fun, but reading a Tolkien book will put you into in the story more, so I guess that the basic difference is between immersion vs. camaraderie.